[STA]

I say a large influence.

[Noumenon]

Small effect. What he can do is try to get congress to cut taxes and deregulate, and veto big spending bills. Other than that, its really up to Congress to stop policies that hurt the economy.

[Comrade Ogilvy]

The Presidency has a large influence on the economy, as its bureaucracies write their own regulations (70,000 new pages of regulations are added to the Federal Register every year). Additionally, governors to the Federal Reserve Board are appointed by the President.

[smashthestate]

While the president's power can have a large influence on the economy, in conjunction with a cooperative congress (that is, cooperative with the president himself), I think that normally the historical presidential policies on the economy have had a small effect, with exception, of course, to the policies of Roosevelt, which I believe had a large part in extending and worsening the Great Depression of the 1930's.

[Garibaldi]

For the most part I agree with SmashtheState; however, I think that Bush and Reagan are other good examples. While supposed to be small-government canidates, they both cut taxes without cutting spending. They also increased military spending unnecessarily. On top of this, Bush has given bids for military contracts to coporations who not only didn't have to bid competitively and didn't have experience in their feilds, but also stole money on top of already recieving more than a competitive price for services to the military.

And to deter all Dems planning to discuss how Clinton improved the economy, he didn't. The growing technology sector happened to coincide with his presidency, and most of the other sectors followed a normal business curve during the same time period. On the same token, for all the Republicans who say his increased taxation hurt the economy, it's your damn fault for deficeit spending. While he did over spend, part of that was to get us out of a multiple trillion dollar deficeit we were in from Reagan and Bush Sr.