Major Wall Street Republican Jumps Ship

Two weeks ago, The New York Times ran a book review by Christopher Caldwell of Peter G. Peterson's RUNNING ON EMPTY How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.

The author makes a pretty damning charge:

Thanks to three unaffordable tax cuts and an unfinanced Medicare drug benefit that will eventually cost $2 trillion a decade, Mr. Peterson writes, "this administration and the Republican Congress have presided over the biggest, most reckless deterioration of America's finances in history."

Lots of partisan Democrats probably feel this way, so you probably aren't too surprised to read this quote here.

So, why am I bothering to note it?

Well, Peterson is yet another Republican who has abandoned his party in 2004. He was Secretary of Commerce under Richard Nixon and later chaired the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The book, by the way, apparently take plenty of potshots against Democrats, mostly for increasing spending on various government programs. But the most striking criticism is reserved for Bush because of the combined effect of the new spending (represented by the Medicare plan) and the enormous deficits caused by the huge tax cuts.

If you've lost track, I've posted on this Republican thread here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. There may be more.


Note: Thanks to one of my colleages for highlighting the Peterson quote in a recent letter-to-the-editor of the Louisville Courier Journal. I cannot find that letter on-line.