Posted on 03/01/2012 4:10:36 AM PST by Kaslin
Public Television touted the Bill Clinton documentary as a long-awaited warts-and-all piece. USA Today called the two-parter a "solid and even-handed account ... of a remarkably skillful politician with an immense intellect." While calling it "tedious and predictable," The Washington Post described the documentary as "honest."
In the first hour, the documentary stumbled out of the gate. If it were a racehorse, they'd have to put it down. The whopper we get hit with right away and again and again is this: Clinton inherited a recession -- not an economy that long ago came out of a recession. Never mind that 1993 -- 19 years ago -- is within the living memory of many Americans. Yet we are repeatedly told that Clinton entered office under a full-on economic meltdown.
The narrator says: "Heading into the fall (of l992) ... with the economy still faltering. ..."
The narrator later says, "As Clinton took office in the winter of 1993, the economic crisis that had propelled him into office showed few signs of abating."
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin adds: "We had had a recession. We had high unemployment. And it was a lot of uncertainty about whether the United States was going to get on its feet again or whether we could be in for a prolonged period of real difficulty. So he came into a very difficult environment."
Journalist Joe Klein describes Clinton's first budget battle, in the late summer of '93, as a gamble "in the midst of a recession."
And midway through the piece, the narrator informs us that "by the fall of 1994, the economy was growing again."
This is simply extraordinary, mind-boggling.
Whether Bill Clinton was a good president, whether he deserves the credit for balanced budgets and projected surpluses or whether he should have been impeached are matters about which reasonable people can and do disagree. But whether Bill Clinton entered office "in the midst of a recession" and whether, in the fall of '92 and the winter of '93, the economy was "still faltering" and "showed few signs of abating" -- these are matters of fact.
The National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., is the official keeper of the U.S. business cycle. It defines a recession as "a period of diminishing (economic) activity." It tracks when recessions begin (a "peak" -- the month when a period of economic growth ends and a downturn begins) and when recessions end (a "trough" -- the month when the downturn bottoms out and the economy begins to grow again).
Bill Clinton entered office in January 1993. According to the NBER, did he inherit a recession? Not even close. The recession began in July 1990 and ended eight months later, in March 1991 -- a full 19 months before Clinton was even elected.
Let's be charitable. Perhaps the documentary used a different definition of recession. True, some experts use another standard: two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. But during Bush-41's last year in office -- 1992, the year voters elected Clinton -- the economy grew every quarter, averaging 3.2 percent.
But today, nearly two decades after the fact, the PBS narrator solemnly states that "as Clinton took office in the winter of 1993, the economic crisis that had propelled him into office showed few signs of abating" -- even though the economy was then on its 22nd consecutive month of positive growth!
Really? "In the winter of 1993 ... the economic crisis ... showed few signs of abating"? Jan. 29, 1993, seven days after Clinton took office, The New York Times wrote, "U.S. Says Economy Grew at Fast Pace in Fourth Quarter: The economy grew at a faster-than-expected annual rate of 3.8 percent in the final quarter of 1992, the strongest performance in four years, the Commerce Department reported today."
The confusion is understandable. Many in the media suffer from CRAP -- Clinton Recession Amnesia Problem. CRAP spares few victims. Take MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who once said she knows little about economics and, bless her, seems determined to prove it. In January 2009, the month President Obama took office, Maddow said: "Clinton took the oath during an economic downturn, but that was a romper room compared to today's down-crash."
In October 1992, as President George Herbert Walker Bush ran for re-election against Bill Clinton, the economy was 18 months into a recovery. But as Investor's Business Daily noted, 90 percent of the newspaper stories on the economy were negative. Yet the following month, when Clinton defeated Bush-41, suddenly only 14 percent of economic news stories were negative!
Given the media recitation of the false history of the state of the 1992-1993 economy -- when Clinton entered office -- why expect PBS to get it right?
Historical revisionism occurs when someone challenges a conventional point of view. But the Clinton documentary -- as to the state of the economy he inherited -- is not historical revisionism. This documentary simply recites the "facts" as the traditional media see it: Clinton inherited a recession left by his Republican predecessor -- and that's that.
Well, you're quite right, and I think he is in trouble -- with the 53% or whatever it is who haven't been bought yet. (And I don't know if the "bought" voters will stay bought: some 60's history from Louisiana elections suggest maybe they won't, if the social issues are on the GOP's side.)
But there is a residual benefit from nonstop, organized, edited-and-concordance-tested Big Lying, and that is that, the voter may decide that it's all lies, but still be demoralized by the thought that masses of other people believe it. Now there is your propagandist's true art, methinks, and the true inducement for JournoList-type lying.
The so-called surpluses were based on projected(bogus)returns on over-inflated values on just about everything....except reality.
The slick one was a fraud-master, but the current WH resident makes him look like an amateur.
I'm no fan of GW Bush, but am sick of hearing the "poor Obama inherited this mess"...blah blah garbage.
Using that twisted logic then...Bush inherited Clinton's mess....9/11(when was the FIRST attack on the Trade Center?), and the bursting of all the criminally engineered/inflated bubbles/ponzi schemes(perps more than likely Clinton cronies....for the most part).
Frankly I don't think the Clintons gave two shtz if Bush ate the eventual collapse, or Gore.
Obama's so-called "improving economy" is based on similar rigged data....while printing trillions to bail out old Clinton crooks, union hacks and Soros investments.
The bank robbery of the United States didn't start with the Clintons, but they accelerated it, now it's been put into high gear.
“Possibly what’s at issue here are the “leading economic indicators” — the signs of economic health that point to recovery even before new jobs become more available.”
I understand how that works, but with this latest round we have a “jobless recovery”, and there was no reason to believe the same wouldn’t happen 20 years ago.
“the voter may decide that it’s all lies, but still be demoralized by the thought that masses of other people believe it.”
An electorate that was desperate enough to elect Obama will be desperate enough to get rid of him; any Repub challenger should trounce him, nad he seems to know it (so they threw out the red herring of Repubs opposing contraception on principle, etc.). He has governed for 3 years with contempt for the average Joe, and now he thinks he’ll play catch-up - but he has a LONG way to go.
When I say that the economy was picking up right before GHW Bush reelection bid, I mean that my business(the homebuilding market) was picking up. The homebuilding market has always been a leading indicator and precurser to the general economy picking up. It was back then and it is RIGHT NOW. Right now is the time to buy a house if you can.
After four plus years of doing nothing, building is picking up. Available new homes are at the lowest volume and the most affordable they have ever been. No matter what you hear from all the naysayers on this site who let politics cloud their judgement, the economy is getting better. This does not mean that Phoenix, Detroit and CA real estate are going to the moon. However, I can tell you from personal experience that a lot of markets are much better(TX, ND, SD MN, NH, MA , GA , WA ,IA, AL, CT, KY, NC, VA ,MD , LA , OR ,IN)
We sell into all these markets and their business is much better than last year and increasing.
Building might be picking up, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the “housing market”; I believe a growing number of people who don’t think they can afford children sure as heck aren’t going to commit to a 30 year mortgage just to watch the government let their neighborhood become Tijuana North to prevent de-population.
A lot of young people will never be caught in the mortgage/property tax mire they see around them (if they’d even be lucky enough to qualify for a mortgage, or get a job). Make sure you can differentiate between a temporary “bump” and demographic trends at work for decades.
The demographic trends you are talking about are resulting in a higher percentage of multifamily housing than in the past 20 years. This is also a result of the aging of our population. However, these are still housing starts. We have 300 million people in our country. Our population continues to increase. All those people have to live somewhere.
You are correct in that a lot of people can not qualify to buy a home. That is why they are moving into apartments. Investors are building apt complexes to satisfy this increase in demand. Young people will change their mind about signing for a mortgage when the fear that the price is going up enters into the market.
Fear and greed drive all markets. People have been afraid that if they invest their money in real estate they will lose it. A lot of them got caught up in the last bubble and lost their shirt. They are gun shy. They bought high and sold low. The sheeple will be back when it is running up. The smart money is buying now. They are making offers when the banks are vulnerable and want to remove these bad assets from their balance sheets. I think we already saw a bottom in the market here in NH over this winter. The cheap house are selling fast, usually within 2 months. Some of the Fannie Mae opwned houses are selling as soon as they hit the market. Please remember that all real estate is local. What is happening in NH, ND or Houston may have nothing to do with what is happening in your local area. I have the benefit because of my business of seeing more of a national view.
Always fun debating with another FReeper :)
I always learn from these discussions.
As less people can (at least in their opinion) 1) afford children, or 2) bank on their job or field still providing a living for 30 years, there is simply no incentive to buy a home. Much of the growth in the areas doing well is the result of the wholesale abandonment of other areas by corporate America, and the best off are the unattached (in terms of family & mortgage) who can follow their jobs south. Here in NJ if you were given a house outright, you’d be coughing up nearly $1K per month (in some neighborhoods far more) just for your tax bill; this has resulted in people unable to retire until they can unload their heavily taxed homes on people who are hesitant to buy - the jobs that had made that acceptable in the past have left NJ (with the exception of cops & teachers, and even these are only safe if you’ve got seniority).
People have learned a lot in the past few years, and it would be difficult to convince them that they’ll ever be “safe” in financial terms (relatively speaking).
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