Video: Axelrod dodges the “better off four years ago” question

HotAir ^ | 09/02/2012 | Ed Morrissey

[nhwingut]

Want a preview of the presidential debates? Then spend two and a half minutes with this clip from today’s Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and David Axelrod.

Wallace asks Axelrod the quadrennial question: are voters better off now than four years ago? When the man running Team Obama tries to run away from the question by talking about the tough environment Barack Obama inherited, Wallace lays out the comparison on economic statistics between January 2009 and today, and asks Axelrod again: are voters better off now than four years ago? Answer: Er ….

Video Here

Here are the stats Wallace uses:

Unemployment: 7.8% then, 8.3% now
Median income: $54,983 then, $50,964 now
Gas prices: $1.85 per gallon then, $3.78 now
National debt: $10.6 trillion then, $15.9 trillion now

Expect Mitt Romney to memorize these statistics, and perhaps toss in the civilian participation rate, which was at 65.7% in January 2009 and in June 2009 at the start of the “recovery,” but fell to a 30-year low of 63.6% in April and is at 63.7% now. That’s actually the best measure of the Reagan Metric. If this question doesn’t come from the moderators at the debates, you can bet your bottom dollar that Romney will ask it himself — and that Obama’s (non-)answer will be just as effective, and just as revealing, as Axelrod’s today.

[DoughtyOne]

[fhayek]

In a sense, fiat money (which we have) is always created out of thin air, in the manner you describe. The challenge to central bankers is to maintain a growth in the money supply that is proportional to the growth of goods and services available in the economy. It become a chicken and egg kind of problem, because the Fed usually abandons maintaining value of the currency in favor of trying to 'stimulate' the economy.

[Shady]

Money laundering...Our children’s future stolen by the regime and the cronies that are the Regime...