From: echo@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Hagame uno mas!  Esos son muy cool!)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: Question about Clinton's "didn't inhale" remark
Date: 23 Jul 92 21:37:15 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: ucscb.ucsc.edu


In article <3398@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> psg+@pitt.edu (Paul S Galvanek) writes:
>In article <1992Jul19.225428.25403@afterlife.ncsc.mil> glreno@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Gerald Reno) writes:
>>Correct me if I'm wrong... aren't we ALREADY in the biggest
>>recession since the 1930's?
>
>Well Jerry I'll correct you.  First of all we are NOT in a recession at all,
>yes the media likes to use that word but if you pick up an economics book
>you'll see the reality. 
>
>Recessions are typically marked by high inflation, interest rates, low consumer
>spending, high unemployement.  Our economy has NONE of those traits.  7.2%
>unemployement rates are not high, they could be lower but they are not high at
>all by historical standards and we have low interest rates, low inflation,
>consumer spending, what we have is not a recession.
>
>Read the Wall Street Journal and you see that what we have is called a "
>"period of reduced growth".  Growth being the operative word here, we're
>still growing just not at the rates we've become accustomed to over the last
>12 years.

The operative words here are "typically marked by".  Dyslexia is typically
marked by slow learning curves, *but* sometimes not.  We have been fortunate
enough to forgo high inflation rates during this recession, mostly due to
the cautiousness of the Fed.  However, the result of that cautiousness has
also extended the recession.  If you'll go read an economics text, you'll
discover that the definition of a recession is receding growth rates.  What
you apparently wish to term a recession is actually a depression, where you
have negative.

>If you want to see the worst recession since the 30's take a look at the
>economy near the end of the Carter administration, that's a bad recession
>and take note at the policies Carter and his Democratic Congress and how
>similar they are to what Clinton proposes.

Let's look at a revealing quote from Leonard Lurie:

"It was in the field of domestic economics that Nixon failed most grievously;
on Election Day, 1968, the inflation rate was a moderate 2.5% per annum. It
had remained at that level for the previous three years, despite the increasing
amounts of money Johnsonwas spending on the war.  As soon as he took office,
Nixon accepted the advice of conservatives, such as Arthur Burns [ & Paul S
Galvanek? :) ] and allowed interest rates to be forced up in a semi-
hysterical effort to lower this acceptable inflation figure.  Instead, by the
end of his first year in office, that rate had gone up to 5 percent.  By the
time he resigned, the country was experiencing a Weimar inflation rate in
excess of twelve percent.

Unemployment, which had been a 3.3 percent of the workforce when he was elected,
was 8 percent when he moved out of the White House.  During his five and a half
years in office, the country experienced four years of economic decline.  There
was only one short upturn during the 1972 election year, as the need to win his
last campaign drove him to extremes which included not only Watergate, but a
sharp dose of Keynesian pump-priming economics."
                                                  Leonard Lurie
                                                  Party Politics, pp 250-1

In other words, the only time conservative economic policies worked was when
they resorted to trademark liberal tactics.  Still don;t agree?  How about
the decidely Keynesian work programs instituted by Reagan/Bush at Lockheed,
Lawrence Livermore, McDonnell-Douglas (which wouldn't have survived the
'80s without a liberal dose of conservative pork)?

Furthermore, the Carter recession was a continuation of crises begun during
the Nixon/Ford years, including the energy crisis, bounding unemployment and
inflation, and a crisis in trust of our leaders brought about by Nixon and his
sleazy little "plumbers".

>How soon they forget, but I won't.
>
>PSG

Yes, you have the memory of an elephant.  One of the more selective storage
devices around.

-- 
  //          ---<--@                     -Echo
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Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:35436 ca.politics:5953