They would be correct because there's no such thing as a practicing libertarian Republican executive...
just because growth has crawled to a snails pace, it's still growth. we certainly aren't as sound as we would like to be, but our economy is still chugging along. all we need is a tuneup and an oil change, we don't need to rebuild the entire machine. using gramm is highly disconcerting, and unless we are going to completely deregulate then we will continue to have problems. seeing how we won't, the GS act needs to be brought back once again.
Well, the stock market of the late 90s burst with a Democrat in office. A lot of people forget the economy was in the toilet before Clinton left and Bush was left with a cruddy economy. Then there was 9/11 which further messed everything up. But I guess people forgot about that 5-6 years of the great economy before this downturn. I'm pretty sure the moral of the story is the President actually doesn't have that much impact on the economy overall. There can be a stimulus here or there, or tax cuts or increases here or there, but overall, natural economic and business cycles will trump any President sitting in office. I'm not even sure Congress has that much to do with the economy despite the fact they are the actual legislators of the US. I guess you could claim the big downfall was right after the Dems and Pelosi took power in Congress, and you could extrapolate that Dems drove the economy into the ground, but in fact, they probably don't have much to do with the economy either. It seems, the best economic times might be when there is mixed representation in government. A Dem President with a Republican Congress or vice versa, but even THAT probably doesn't make that big of a difference either.
I don't think many people realize how bad the whole credit mess is. There is trillions of dollars in assets that have declined. Poof the value is gone. Unfortunately most of these banks decided to over leveraged themselves to make money. Now if the creditors want their money back, there isn't enough to pay them back.
The dot-com burst was inevitable, but starting a war we couldn't afford cutting taxes for the rich, picking policies that greatly devalue the dollar is a result of bad policy. We didn't have 5-6 years of a good economy. Real wages have been going down for a while.
obama's attempt to capitalize... will it work? <embed src="http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1185304443" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1797161858&playerId=1185304443&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed>
I agree that the war was stupid, but the tax cuts benefited everybody, poor people paid less tax than under Clinton. The monetary policy was the fed, not the President, and the economy was good for at least 4 years, maybe not 5-6. Unemployment was near non-existant at around 5%, the stock market was hot, and GNP was excellent.
under this president, the DJIA will have experienced no growth by the end of his 8 years in office. no cherry picking
The OP did gloss over the strides the market made under Reagan/Bush Sr (over 3x gain) and only pointed out that "Black Friday" occurred under their watch. He did "cherry pick" that data.
The common thread that binds these painful events in the financial world: Black Monday (2), 2008, when the DOW drop 788 points, ~7% drop Black Monday, 2008, when the DOW dropped 500+ point, ~ 5% drop Black Friday, 1987, when the DOW dropped >5% the stock market crash of 1929 A Republican president was in office. it speaks volume about their ability to run the economy. let's get the facts straight. most of that rise in the DOW, as pointed out by you, happened in the Reagan term. Bush Sr. inept economic policy stalled the economic growth. the reason that the American voters fired the incumbent Bush Sr. and opted for the relative unknown Gov from Arkansas, Clinton, was Bush 41's inept handling of the economy. The difference between Reagan and Clinton was that Clinton was able to generate budget surplus, something that Reagan was not able to accomplished. also, the fact that there were no "black" day in Wall Street during Clinton's terms speaks volume about his ability to keep the economy growing STEADILY .
