Romney On Obama, Etc.

Mitt Romney's comments from an interview he did with Time magazine's Randy James:
I think President Obama is off to a rocky start. The theme "Yes, we can" seems to have been replaced with "Well, maybe we can't." I believe that with all the challenges America faces, the simple solutions and the hopes that were sold by the Obama team are inadequate to the task ahead.
The Cabinet appointments have been subject to a disappointing vetting process. His forays into foreign affairs produced a very unfortunate comment that America has been "dictating" to other nations.
And rather than proposing and driving through Congress his own economic-stimulus plan, President Obama ceded the construction to House Democrats. They in turn have come up with a pork-laden, ineffective piece of legislation, which I think Americans are increasingly recognizing will not solve the economic challenges we face.
I do think a stimulus bill is needed. It has been demonstrated time and again that returning money to taxpayers in the form of a tax reduction has the most bang for the buck. If there's going to be federal spending, it should be devoted exclusively to very high-priority, urgent projects that can be completed on a rapid basis. But the congressional Democrats added a basketful of liberal projects that have little, if anything, to do with stimulating the economy.

Clinton: Don't Blame Me!

From Yahoo News:
Given the sweep and severity of today's global economic crisis, it would seem there's plenty of blame to go around. But Bill Clinton doesn't think any of it should fall on his shoulders.
On Monday morning's Today Show, Ann Curry's interview with the former president - recorded over the weekend outside a Clinton Global Initiative event in Texas - addressed Clinton's inclusion on TIME's list of the "25 People to Blame" for the global economic collapse. "Oh no," he responded, "My question to them is: Do any of them seriously believe if I had been president, and my economic team had been in place the last eight years, that this would be happening today? I think they know the answer to that: No." (See TIME's list of the 25 people to blame for the collapse)
The magazine's story, which apportioned blame widely between such figures as Countrywide co-founder Angelo Mozilo, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld and President George W. Bush, zeroed in on two specific economic policy decisions made during the Clinton administration. Clinton ushered out the Glass-Steagall Act, which for decades had separated commercial and investment banking, and signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act - which exempted all derivatives, including the now-notorious credit-default swaps, from federal regulation. His administration also loosened housing rules, which added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods.