Presidents Day: Worst Decisions Ever

We'll be talking about presidents all week long as part of our Presidents Day Spectacular. Today we'll be going over four of the worst decisions in presidential history.*, **

John Adams: The Alien and Sedition Acts. Made it a crime to criticize the government. Easily one of our worst presidents. Of course, the act led to the imprisonment of several journalists, something we normally support. Part of the general moral panic about French Revolutionary influence. Hey, this rings a bill, doesn't it?

Andrew Jackson: The Specie Circular. Andrew Jackson waged unrelenting war against American Indians and the Second Bank of the United States. As part of the latter, he sought to bleed the Bank dry by issuing the Specie Circular which mandated that the Feds would only take gold and silver as payment for land purchases. This caused a drain on the bank's specie holdings and its collapse, which led to a run on the banks and the Panic of 1837.

Franklin Roosevelt: Yalta. As is well known, here Roosevelt agreed with Stalin that Europe should be divided into an American and Soviet sphere. By doing so Roosevelt consigned Eastern Europe to Soviet domination for the next forty years

Bill Clinton: Easy Credit. In 1999 Bill Clinton in conjunction with HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo relaxed Fannie May and Freddie Mack lending rules leading to millions of underqualified recipients getting cheap ARM mortgages. There followed the housing bubble, the Financial Crisis of 2008 and finally the Great Recession.

*Herbert Hoover was actually very interventionist during the Depression. 
**And don't talk to us about W and Iraq. You think removing Saddam was a bad thing?