THE USA

To an outsider, the US presidential debate yesterday was disappointing. Although it started well, it eventually evolved into a contest around private issues rather than who has the best policies to run the country. A lot of time was spent on The Donald's reluctance to disclose his financial information.

There is no moral equivalence between Donald Trump's private business finances and Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while in office, which was a blatant breach of the law and compromised national security. Clinton has since been actively engaged in a cover up, including the deletion of a very large number of emails (an estimated 30,000 emails are believed to have been deleted).

Even so, this did not prevent Clinton from sounding forth on the need for USA cyber security in answer to a question on the topic. She blamed Russia for making cyber attacks.

A large part of the debate was consumed with matters such as Obama's birther issue, alleged disgruntled business associates of Donald Trump, past lawsuits, past descriptions of women and other such tittle-tattle. A positive view is that now the tittle-tattle has been debated, then in the future, time will not be wasted on it.

The first 30 minutes of the debate were the most important, and focused on economic policy. Donald Trump explained the need to stop Mexico and China, in particular, from exploiting US trade tolerance by using a number of protectionist measures to the USA's disadvantage, and the jobs lost as firms relocated overseas. Hillary Clinton dodged the thrust of the issue, preferring to make promises about the minimum wage and child care. Her tactic was to change the topic.

Donald Trump highlighted what he saw as the USA's precarious economic situation, with its trade deficit, poor trade deals, over regulation and high taxation, and the danger posed of higher interest rates given that Obama had doubled the national debt. He said that the USA increasingly resembled a Third World country.

By contrast, Clinton ignored these issues and preferred to use pre-rehearsed smears. She alleged that there was a 'Trump Loophole' and dismissed what she described as 'Trumped-Up, Trickle-Down' economics. In her biggest whopper, she said that her husband, Bill, had done a good job in the 1990s and, regarding the Slump of 2008 – or the banking 'credit crunch' (to use a term she might prefer to avoid), she said:

'We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle-class, took their eyes off Wall Street, and created a perfect storm … Nine million people – nine million people lost their jobs. Five million people lost their homes. And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out.'

In fact, it was reckless banking matched by reckless economic policy that created a large rise in debt at a time of stagnant incomes that caused the crash. Central to this was Bill Clinton, who was president from 1993-2001. Lawrence Kudlow and Stephen Moore of CNBC recently wrote:

‘Let's look at the many ways the Clintons and cronies contributed to the Great Recession. The seeds of the mortgage meltdown were planted during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Under Clinton's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in "credit-deprived" areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting. If banks didn't comply with these rules, regulators reined in their ability to expand lending and deposits.

These new HUD rules lowered down payments from the traditional 20 percent to 3 percent by 1995 and zero down-payments by 2000. What's more, in the Clinton push to issue home loans to lower income borrowers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made a common practice to virtually end credit documentation, low credit scores were disregarded, and income and job history was also thrown aside. The phrase "subprime" became commonplace. What an understatement.

Next, the Clinton administration's rules ordered the taxpayer-backed Fannie and Freddie to expand their quotas of risky loans from 30 percent of portfolio to 50 percent as part of a big push to expand home ownership.

Fannie and Freddie were securitizing these home loans and offering 100 percent taxpayer guarantees of repayment. So now taxpayers were on the hook for these risky, low down-payment loans.

Tragically, when prices fell, lower-income folks who really could not afford these mortgages under normal credit standards, suffered massive foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. So many will never get credit again. It's a perfect example of liberals using government allegedly to help the poor, but the ultimate consequences were disastrous for them.

Additionally, ultra-easy money from the Fed also played a key role …

Many bond packages were written to please Fannie and Freddie, based on the fantastical idea that home prices would never fall. Fannie and Freddie, by the way, cost the taxpayers $187 billion.

Just to make this story worse, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama voted to filibuster a Republican effort to roll back Fannie and Freddie. But on top of all this, while Hillary was propping up Fannie and Freddie, she was taking contributions from their foundations.

A Washington Times investigative report concluded that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's political action committee and individuals linked to the companies donated $75,500 to Mrs. Clinton's senatorial campaign. And on top of that, the embattled Clinton Foundation received a $50,000 contribution from Freddie Mac, according to the Times.’

Additionally, it was in 1999 that the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, which had been in place since 1933 to separate commercial and investment banking.

Hillary Clinton mentioned that 'independent experts' had examined Donald Trump's tax plans and concluded that the plans would cost jobs and adversely affect the middle-classes. In Britain, where we were deluged with a whole horde of 'experts' claiming that a vote for Brexit would precipitate an immediate recession, we are not impressed with 'independent experts'.

Regarding law and order, Donald Trump drew attention to the effect of the murder rate on African Americans, who he considered had been let down by successive Democrat politicians; whereas Clinton was more concerned about the 'systemic racism' of the criminal justice system.

Those who believe that the USA has serious problems and needs radical change will see that The Donald shares their concerns and is determined to act. Those who do not see much wrong, and have a politically-correct outlook, can vote for Clinton in the knowledge that things will continue as they are and, presumably, she will happily double the US government debt again.