Our current economic downturn is no exception. Despite last week's surprise interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve and the temporary boost it gave to the stock market, previous policy errors at the Fed and in Congress have played a big part in what is still an economic drought in the manufacturing and high-tech sectors, and in the corporate layoffs that have caused increased worker angst in recent months.
Recessions are always miserable news for the party of incumbents.
But to get out of the economic downturn, our government officials need to understand how it began in the first place. The manufacturing sector of the economy has been in recession for eight months now. What we are experiencing is America's first information-age recession. The prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge recently declared the 1982-2000 expansion the most unprecedented period of sustained prosperity in the 20th Century. The economy has doubled in size since 1980.