But I have never understood this whole "21st Century vs. 20th Century" mumbo-jumbo. It's as if when 2000 rolled around, everyone woke up and decided to do things in a different way. 9/11 may have changed things in a global context, and the way that we conduct security checks in our country has gotten tighter. But 9/11 didn't warp the world into some negaverse where every single system is somehow changed from the week beforehand. We certainly aren't faced with trying to figure out how to navigate all these new systems in a post-2000 world.

And Obama does it too. His whole 21st Century Military shtick is fine in terms of talking about modernizing our military; but again, when 2000 happened, people didn't suddenly start making a new generation of artillery, and the rest of the world's powers didn't suddenly reorganize their military structures.

I think that people stopped paying attention to Dubya personally after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina and the in-court revelations of the Valerie Plame affair at Scooter Libby's trial. Despite what the still-fawning media was saying about him, he lost significant credibility with a lot of people who had twice voted for Bush, but then did a collective (however belated) double-take.

any maroon able to regurgitate facts from a book can get an MBA. frankly, the same goes for pretty much any college degree or professional license. they're no guarantors of creative thinking or strong analytical ability, two sets of skills painfully absent from pres. bush's resume'.

most people actually watching during the 2000 election campaign realized this, including the MSM. but gosh, he was a fun guy to have a beer with! what followed, after the debacle of his first election, was no surprise. that he was re-elected was. that he's now become irrelevant (he has been for some time now) was to be expected, given his essential vacuuity.

come next jan., they'll take him home, to be hung in the hallway closet, with the overcoats and umbrellas.

I suspect that's what Bush was referring to, since Paulson, Bernanke et al know this very well and are trying to figure out how to do just that. It's a simple enough concept that I expect Bush himself actually does understand it.

One of the reasons we need a very vigilant regulatory apparatus is that, like with Credit Default Swaps and the like, there are whiz kids in the back rooms of these financial institutions who figure out ever more bizarre loopholes in whatever regulatory structures exist and create new financial instruments to take advantage of them.

Where there are great gobs of money floating around looking for a place to invest, as there have been from China and India, you can count on somebody figuring out a way to capture them and profit from them.

It's not a static business, it constantly evolves and innovates.