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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (20704)	8/29/2004 11:09:38 PM
From: CalculatedRisk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

I understand the need to offer excuses for Bush, but you start with several facts that are inaccurate. First, although Greenspan raised rates in 2000, he did not raise rates "dramatically to end the speculative" bubble. In fact rates were between 5% and 6% (i.e. stable) for almost 5 years between 1995 and 2000 (except for a short period of 4.75% during the Asian financial crisis). You can verify this here (the FED did raise rates to 6.5% in 2000): federalreserve.gov Second, the recession was not exacerbated by 9/11. In fact, that tragedy helped the country out of recession as people spent like there was no tomorrow. You can verify this at this site (the official recession site) shows that the economy emerged from recession in November 2001 (right after 9/11). nber.org Some industries struggled after 9/11 (like air travel as you wrote) but consumer spending picked up. Then you make the assertion that job losses would have been worse if Bush hadn't cut taxes and ran a deficit. Most economists think there was some stimulative effect from the tax cuts / deficits, but not much. In fact a number of prominent economists (including ten Nobel laureates) wrote Bush in early 2003 stating the the Bush plan was not properly designed for job creation. epinet.org List of signatories: epinet.org One thing we agree on is that the economy was heading into recession in 2001 no matter who was elected President. In fact I posted my analysis on SI predicting a recession in 2001. Now I'm predicting a slowdown (possible recession) in early to mid-2005 - once again no matter who is President. The current economy is a built on a marshland of debt and the recovery is currently not self-sustaining. This is obvious (no matter what Greenspan says) since interest rates are still accommodative and IF the Fed raised rates to neutral we would be in a recession tomorrow. "Self sustaining" is a joke. We need to change our fiscal policies to get out of this mess.