If George W. Bush was a CFO.....

......he would have been fired. So says the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts.

President George W. Bush has destroyed America's economy along with America's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights.

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between one and two trillion dollars. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush's economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush, because Lindsey's estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can't work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for dub-ya.

Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer any where in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence.

Talk about cost overruns, $70 billion to $2 trillion. And who can we thank for it? The people who told Bush and Cheney what they wanted to hear.

Bush's war cost almost 30 times more than he said it would because the moronic neoconservatives that he stupidly appointed to policy positions told him the invasion would be a cakewalk. Neocons promised minimal US casualties. Iraq already has cost 2,200 dead Americans and 16,000 seriously wounded--and Bush's war is not over yet. The cost of lifetime care and disability payments for the thousands of US troops who have suffered brain and spinal damage was not part of the unrealistic rosy picture that Bush painted.

But it gets worse, Roberts thinks that the 2 trillion figure is optimistic because it doesn't factor in the damage to the economy.

In 2005 for the first time on record consumer, business, and government spending exceeded the total income of the country. Net national savings actually fell.

America can consume more than it produces only if foreigners supply the difference. China recently announced that it intends to diversify its foreign exchange holdings away from the US dollar. If this is not merely a threat in order to extort even more concessions from Bush, Americans' ability to consume will be brought up short by a fall in the dollar's value as China ceases to be a sponge that is absorbing an excessive outpouring of dollars. Oil producing countries might follow China's lead.

Now that Americans are dependent on imports for their clothing, manufactured goods, and even high technology products, a decline in the dollar's value will make all these products much more expensive. American living standards, which have been treading water, will sink.

A decline in living standards is an enormous cost and will make existing debt burdens unbearable. Stiglitz did not include this cost in his estimate.

Boy, King George is working on one hell of a legacy. He not only started an unwinnable war he effectively destroyed the US economy at the same time.