Posted on 01/11/2002 8:21:14 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
The Disappearing Bush Recession
Editor's Note: Due to my travel schedule, this article on the "Disappearing Bush Recession" did not get posted last week. As of today, January 9, 2002, of course the stock market is even higher.
The stock market closed Friday, December 29, 2001 up 5.68%, at 10136.99. The last week of December 1995, in the midst of the so-called Clinton economic boom, the stock market closed at 5098. The unemployment rate, which was 4.9% when the World Trade Center was destroyed September 11th, had risen by the end of October 2001, to 5.0%, rising .3% from the time George W. Bush was sworn into office in January 2001. During the economic boom we heard so much about from the media during the Clinton years, in October 1995, the unemployment rate was 5.2%.
However, by November 30, 2001, at a breakfast meeting with USA TODAY and Gannett News Service reporters and editors, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairwoman Nita Lowey announced that “the time is right to make an issue of the economic downturn. Lowey, a New York Democrat who is overseeing the Democrats’ effort to win at least six additional seats to take control of the House of Representatives in 2002 elections said: “The bottom line is, this is George Bush's recession," And, of course, Lowey and the Democrats can count on the media to report that there is a “Bush recession.” There’s only one small problem with those reports, however. Most people are not experiencing a recession OR unemployment.
The Washington Post reported on December 28th that the Conference Board, a New York-based business research group, said its consumer confidence index jumped nearly nine points, to 93.7 in December, after being depressed in October and November following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
It appears that the Democrats and the media recession talk, which began literally the DAY Al Gore finally conceded defeat, did erode consumer confidence, especially following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
However, the rapid defeat of the Taliban, and people’s own personal experiences, have given the public growing confidence in their own economic future. Businesses, on the other hand, appear to have kept inventories very low through the holiday season, thinking the public would not buy much this year.
This resulted in consumer complaints that they had trouble finding gifts in the size or color they needed. The result? One Commerce Department report showed that new orders for durable goods, excluding aircraft and defense items, rose 2.4 percent in November on the heels of a 4.1 percent gain in October. Orders for new motor vehicles rose substantially, to a level not seen since last spring, and high-tech orders, which had been falling since the middle of last year, were also up for the second month in a row. A second Commerce Department report showed sales of both new and existing homes rose in November, reaching a high for the year in December.
However, it is worth mentioning that a major goal of Osama bin Laden, as he stated in his latest video, was to shake "the throne of America and hit hard the American economy at its heart and its core." In fact, he said the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were easy to carry out and have shown America's economic strength to have fragile underpinnings. "It collapsed very easily." Only, he appears to have been wrong about America’s economic strength having fragile underpinnings. The building may have collapsed easily, but America’s economic strength is in its people and not in buildings. In spite of a hammering by the media, the anti-globalists, the terrorists and others who seem bent on destroying the U.S. economy, the people who make it work don’t seem to be listening.
That “Bush Recession” that the Democrats and the media have tried so hard to create, isn’t flying. I suspect that it’s not flying because most Americans simply no longer believe what they are being told by the media. The drop in the public’s approval ratings has been dramatic. In two months time, from mid-September 2001 to mid-November 2001, the media’s approval rating dropped 43%, from 86% to 43%.
This will have an impact in 2002, a congressional election year, and will undoubtedly determine how much of George W. Bush’s agenda becomes law. Do we elect a congress that supports the Bush agenda, or do we elect a congress determined to undermine that agenda?
If my e-mail is any indication, I suspect we are going to see a major attack on George W. Bush by those who claim to be “conservatives” as well as those, like Nita Lowey, who are unabashed liberals.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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However, it is worth mentioning that a major goal of Osama bin Laden, as he stated in his latest video, was to shake "the throne of America and hit hard the American economy at its heart and its core."Where do we keep our throne? Other than the porcelain versions. I wouldn't know it if he did hit it.
You wouldn't know it from the crowds...The media tried their best to warn us that the economy was tanking. But somehow the message didn't get through. Everyone was at the mall.
"Bad economy" appears to be in the eye of the beholder, and most of those beholders are left-leaning media people.
Either you're full of sh*t or you're family is the picture of underachievement.
The economy isn't great right now, but it's not that bad either.
Buck up! I was laid off in August from a job with a managed health care company (made increasingly unprofitable in part by over-regulation by the government which is trying to turn managed care into more costly "fee-for-service" insurance), and yet I got a job in December with an organization that was actually expanding its staff -- this in the midst of a recession.
Bush cannot be blamed for the prolonged joblessness of any one individual.
It was even worse out our way. We had 5 family gatherings of 100 people each and not one of them even knew anyone who had worked for the last 25 years. We all ate rocks and pebbles and cursed the fates the entire time.
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
NO! Don't you know it's the governments job to make sure nothing bad ever happens to us. < /saecasm>
Emphasis mine.
Hmmmm ...is there another Clinton running for office? Is Carville back in the country? Maybe Belaga, when he has time from his resume submittals. Perhaps, Stephanapoulis...when he gets back from his 'honeymoon'.
Right. When the most damning thing the Democrats and their fellow travellers in the media can say is that the federal surplus over the next ten years won't be as great as was anticipated a year ago, that's not saying much.
My prediction: The economy will rebound without Congress doing anything in the way of an economic stimulus package -- thereby showing, once again, that the economy is better off when politicians leave their hands off of it.
I've been through many recessions, this ain't one of them.
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
I know exactly what you are talking about. Any job where the toilets are indoors is luxury as far as I am concerned.
Oh, what a crock.
'Zackly what I've been sayin', only with a lot more sarcasm. ;^)
Yeah but WE had it TOUGH! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold rat poison, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
Sorry to hear that. Yet in the 'rust belt', at GM plants, both shifts are working 10-12 hours for the past few years. ???
Thought we'd take advantage of the recession to find a good vacation bargain. The travel agent said she was as busy as ever and no good deals are to be had.
You're right. And a lot funnier, too.
But then again, you're Laz.
You are obviously overlooking their true agenda -- forcing Soviet-stye socialism on America.
WARNING...WARNING...radical concept alert!!!
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