In 2009, the National Debt, at the end of President G. W. Bush’s (2001 – 2009) last annual budget reached almost $12 Trillion.

However, according to Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider Magazine, it was President Clinton (1993 – 2001) that brought about the global financial crises of 2007-08 that still haunts us today because he did not spend enough and increase the national debt.

Conservative, Libertarian and Tea Party national debt critics often use this opinion as evidence to place blame on President Clinton in addition to welfare spending for the current growing $16 Trillion National Debt as if no one in the Republican Party (GOP) is responsible for one cent of it.

At this point, I think it is necessary to stop and examine the foundation of this claim before continuing with the Evolution of a National Burden.

Who is Deputy Editor Joe Weisenthal and Henry Blodget, his boss at Business Insider Magazine?

Binyamin Appelbaum at The New York Times says, “In Weisenthal, Blodget has found a market-obsessive who embodies his vision. Weisenthal, 31 and still a bit baby-faced, is funny, omnivorous and well versed in the mechanics of the economy. In the intensely competitive world of financial blogging, dominated by young men who work long hours and comment on every new development, Weisenthal stands apart by starting earlier, writing more, publishing faster. …

“Weisenthal wanted to come to New York as a playwright. In college at the University of Texas, he wrote the lyrics and music for a satire of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and after graduating in 2002, he submitted it to the New York International Fringe Festival. When the play was rejected, he took the analyst position instead. And when that began to sour, he and a friend started a blog cataloging their thoughts about markets called TheStalwart.com. …

“Weisenthal says his own political thinking has shifted from something like libertarianism to the Keynesian view that the government should borrow and spend massively during a recession.”

Weisenthal’s thinks Bill Clinton brought about the financial crisis by running surpluses (and not borrowing and spending massively adding to the national debt). Weisenthal claims that it was Clinton’s surpluses that lead to the accumulation of private debts that subsequently triggered the financial crisis.

His boss, the editor and CEO of The Business Insider Magazine, is Henry Blodget.

In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, published Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which conflicted with what was publicly published. In 2003, Blodget was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement.

Before his time at Merrill Lynch and the subsequent charge of civil security fraud, Blodget was a freelance journalist and a proofreader for Harper’s Magazine. In 2001, he accepted a buyout of his contract from Merrill Lynch and left the firm. Blodget’s net worth is $15 million today. Source: Get Networth.com

You may want to learn more about Henry Blodget from Tim Worstall’s The Henry Blodget Edition of Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics published by Forbes.

In addition, you may want to read this from John Carney, a Senior Editor at CNBC.com. “My old boss Henry Blodget has a post up at Business Insider lamenting the fact that he cannot cast his vote for a fiscally conservative Republican without also supporting what he calls “Republican Religious Aggressives.”

Blodget started as a freelance journalist/proofreader and then worked for Merrill Lynch before being banned from the securities industry due to a charge of civil securities fraud. Then he became the millionaire editor and CEO of a financial magazine, and in  Joe Weisenthal, Blodget, a “conservative Republican” probably found maybe the only thirty-something man with libertarian/Keynesian views on the planet that “embodies his (own crackpot) vision”.

Does white collar crime pay?

On November 10, 2012, the National Debt hit $16.2 Trillion.

Note: The Inflation calculator used  for this series of posts may be found at Dave Manuel.com, and the primary source for government spending was US Government Spending.com

Continued on December 7, 2012 in The Evolution of a National Burden – Part 7 or return to Part 5

Also discover Each President’s share of the US National Debt and learn more from the National Debt Info-Graphic by President 1945 – 2012

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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