The Jeb! Bush Bust In Florida

Time for an extended excerpt from Jim Tankersley's excellent article today on the Florida bust that Bush Dynasty scion John Ellis "J.E.B.!" Bush would like you to believe was a smashing success under his governance.  The article demonstrates the failure of J.E.B.!'s regulation- gutting and trickle- down economic policy of tax cuts for the rich, which made the housing bubble collapse with even more devastation in Florida than elsewhere in the country. Tankersley's article is quite detailed, so please take time to read it. 

On the campaign trail, Jeb Bush has repeatedly emphasized his record overseeing Florida’s boom economy as the state’s governor. He says it’s an example of an economy that created a huge number of jobs and benefited the middle class — an example of what he could do as president. “I know how to do this,” he said in Maitland, Fla., on Monday.

But according to interviews with economists and a review of data, Florida owed a substantial portion of its growth under Bush not to any state policies but to a massive and unsustainable housing bubble — one that ultimately benefited rich investors at the expense of middle-class families.

The bubble, one of the biggest in the nation, drove up home prices and had many short-term benefits for the state, spurring construction, spending and jobs. But the collapse of the housing bubble as Bush left office in 2007, after eight years of service, sent Florida into a recession deeper than that in the rest of the country, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes.

“Who got hammered? Lower- and middle-class America,” said Marshall Sklar, a real estate investor who, like other well-off financiers operating in the state, has benefited from the wreckage.  [snip]

It is a “huge stretch” for Bush to hold up Florida’s growth as a model for the country, said Stan Veuger, an economist at the ­conservative American Enterprise Institute who is not affiliated with any presidential campaign. “I don’t think you can replicate that growth, from a state with one of the hottest housing markets in the nation, in any sustainable fashion,” he said.  [snip]

In the four years after Bush left office, median income in Florida declined by $5,700 — more than a 10 percent drop and double the percentage drop for the nation as a whole. The typical Florida family’s net worth fell 60 percent in that time, according to the Census Bureau. In a state where so much of the economy revolves around real estate, and where many foreclosures that began years ago are only now winding through the court system, there are 200,000 fewer families who own their homes than there were in 2005.

Many of those families now pay rent to Wall Street firms. Institutional investors have bought up huge inventories of Florida condos and single-family homes, often at foreclosure auctions where they pay less than the assessed value of the properties. They’ve watched the value of those properties rise as the housing market heats up again — and they’ve charged escalating rents to people who no longer own their own homes. Florida metro areas have the largest concentration of investor-owned homes in the country, according to RealtyTrac data.

“This whole thing,” said Thomas Ice, a former corporate lawyer and real estate speculator who now represents hundreds of South Florida homeowners fighting foreclosure, “has been one of the great land grabs — transfers of property to the oligarchs — in the history of the United States.”  (our emphasis)

The article shows "J.E.B.!" to be the candidate of the oligarchs that he is:  gutting regulations, tax cuts for the wealthy, making a deep recession deeper, crashing median income and net worth for middle class families, ending up with fewer homeowners at the end of his term.  But, to "J.E.B.!" it's a success story because, as Mr. Ice says, he presided over "one of the great land grabs - transfers of property to the oligarchs - in the history of the United States."

So if you want to see wealth squeezed even further from low- and- middle-income households in order to fatten the bank accounts of speculators and Wall Street oligarchs (and work more hours, too!), by all means "J.E.B.!" is your man.

(Photo:  The Brothers Bush - the economy was never their strong suit;  that's the "smart" one on the left.)