By Robert Weiner and John Larmett
August 20, 2007.

Contrary to the mythology the party has created, GOP presidents are terrible for business.

At last week's news conference, President Bush again said that he's reduced the deficit to $239 billion, created 8 million jobs and generated unemployment at a low 4.5%. He said the economy is strong, largely due to his tax cut policies. On the other side, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), House Appropriations Committee chairman, has complained of our limited resources now because of Bush's "gargantuan deficits he created with that stupid war and those stupid tax cuts paid for with our money."

There is a widely held belief that Republicans are better for business than are Democrats. Let's look at the facts. The wild stock market ride of recent weeks does not compare to the two worst stock events, the crash of 1929 and the 1987 free fall, which also occurred under Republican administrations. Since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3% annual return on the S&P 500, Republicans only 8%. Gross Domestic Product growth since 1930 is 5.4% for Democratic presidents and 1.6% for Republican presidents.

Bush inherited from President Clinton an annual federal budget surplus of $236 billion, the largest in American history. Clinton balanced the budget for the first time since 1969. Budget surpluses were expected to total $5.6 trillion between fiscal year 2002 and 2011.

Despite this, Bush transformed the surpluses into a $1.1 trillion annual deficit in just three years because of the Iraq war and his relentless push for permanent tax cuts for wealthy Americans, a new iteration of Herbert Hoover's equally catastrophic "trickle-down" theory. Bragging about a $239 billion deficit sets such a low standard that Bush can claim horrific failure as a good thing for the country. The Bush administration's annual loss of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is unprecedented. Bush presided over the loss of 2 million American jobs in his first 2 1/2 years and has net gained 5.6 million in six years, the worst since Hoover. Clinton created 23 million jobs.

It's not rocket science to figure out the difference. Clinton: tax breaks for the middle and lower incomes who actually spend the money, no Iraq war. Bush: disproportionate tax breaks for the wealthy (50% to the wealthiest 1% by 2010), $750 billion for a war monetarily benefiting only a few military contractors and a financial sieve for the country. Democratic presidents spread the wealth through spending on needed social programs and targeting tax cuts to lower- and middle-income Americans, stimulating the economy more broadly. Republicans pump into defense contractors and high-income Americans, creating a significant detriment to the whole economy with larger deficits and higher interest rates.

Economist John Maynard Keynes was right in 1936: When you "prime the pump" into people programs (like jobs or lower income tax cuts to help Americans buy what they need), you get people results. On the other hand, when you move money from the economy into tax cuts for the rich and a military vacuum, you don't prime the economic pump; you deplete it. ...

(more)

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/60217/


Has the Dow hit 15000 yet? Anyone who has been on vacation this summer -- perhaps you went to Mars -- and just got back would think so, considering our president's hard work (though he is off half the summer himself). Cuttin' taxes is hard work. Denyin' child'ens health insurance is hard work. Gettin' ready for my daughter's wedding is hard work.

Reaganomics,
Trickle Down,
Supply Side,
Voo Doo Economics,
Tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations will spur investment,
Let the Market Regulate It's Self,


It's all bull shit designed to baffle the masses and FOOL the middle class into thinking they might have a shot at gettin theirs.
Fuck no the Republicans cannot handle the economy!

More like trickle UP.

Republicans can do two things well: Spend money and give taX breaks to the wealthy.

They get elected on being 'good on defense', they only thing they are good at there is spending money and then attempting to reshape the world thru iarmed aggression and thru proxy that results in tens of thousands of unnecessary and violent deaths. They do almost nothing right except fleece America and appeal to the dumbed down, God fearing "Christians" who vote for them.

Between the "war profiteering"...the endless credit card solicitations....the sub-prime mortgages...tax cuts...freebees for corporations....and who remembers what else....GUESS who has profited?

And what is generally not spoken of...is the fact that we STILL have an election system where most representatives in govt. (all 3 branches) are basically BOUGHT and PAID FOR....that's how they get into power...that's what influences their decisions when there.

Guess who now has all the $$$$$ to buy the next round of SCREW THEM OVER?

December 26, 2007
Signs of the pending recession

Even a non-business owner should be able to distinguish what TBogg lays out about disappointing Christmas sales. And conservatives always claim to be better at understanding basic business practices.

Guess again.

When they hear canaries singing in the coal mine, they think its time for a champagne brunch. Do they really understand business? Or do they just like to sell crap and convince you to promote their salesmen? Looks like the Peter Principle’s playing out so they can unload their stock in retail corporations before the bottom falls out.

http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/20...ding-recession/

He's got the metaphor wrong. Canaries singing IS good news.

I do not argue that the Repubs who have been in the Presidential seat have been great for the economy, because they have not.

But I would argue that it is because they have gone the route of More FedGov rather than less. They have gone the route of more Corporate Welfare and Lobbying corruptions to get re-elected, rather than less.

I would also argue that the last 2 Dems have been just as horrible for the economy for the same reasons.

Inspite of the fact that at least one of them actually managed to reduced the fed govt and also managed to spend less than he brough in?

and dont ask for links. This is common knowledge among enyone over the age of 10

Low Dec job growth numbers point to Fed cut, heighten recession fears

01.04.08

WASHINGTON (Thomson Financial) - Low December job growth numbers have solidified economists' expectations of further Federal Reserve rate cuts and heighten recessionary fears.

According to the report released today by the Department of Labor, the economy added just 18,000 jobs in December, sharply lower than the 70,000 jobs economists polled by Thomson's IFR Markets had expected from the survey of employer payrolls. That's the smallest monthly gain since August 2003, the low point of job creation when the economy lost 42,000 jobs.

December's gain is far below the 111,000 average monthly gain in 2007 and just a fraction of the 100,000 jobs the economy needs to keep up with new entrants to the workforce.

The unemployment rate, taken from a separate survey of households, jumped to 5.0 pct in December, the highest rate since November 2005 and higher than the 4.8 expected by economists.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/20...afx4494998.html

Weak Job Growth Numbers Prompt Stock Selloff

January 4, 2008

By PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

The unemployment rate surged to 5 percent in December as the nation added only 18,000 jobs, the smallest monthly increase in four years, the Labor Department reported on Friday. Investors responded by sending the stock market down sharply.

Economists treated the report as the most powerful evidence to date that the United States could well be falling into a recessionary downturn in economic activity.

“This is unambiguously negative,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “The economy is on the edge of recession, if we’re not already engulfed in one.”

The swift deterioration in the job market resonated as a warning sign that troubles once confined to real estate and construction are now spilling over into the broader economy, threatening the ability of American consumers to keep spending with customary abandon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/business...amp;oref=slogin

Bush says economic foundation solid

Jan. 4, 2008

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- The U.S. economy is on a solid foundation, but economic growth can't be taken for granted, President George W. Bush said Friday.

While praising 52 consecutive months of job creation, Bush -- during remarks made after meeting with the President's Working Group on Financial Markets -- noted job growth slowed in December. A government report said employment experienced its smallest increase in more than four years last month and the nation's jobless rate hit a two-year high.

"I look forward to working with (Congress) to deal with the economic realities of the moment, and to assure the American people that we will do everything we can to make sure we remain a prosperous country," Bush said.

Among the realities facing consumers are higher prices for gasoline and food while core inflation is low, he said. Also consumer spending is strong, yet home values are beginning to decline.

One way to assist consumers is keeping taxes low, Bush said.

"If ... the foundation is strong, yet indicators are mixed, the worst thing the Congress could do is raise taxes on the American people and on American businesses," Bush said.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008...tion_solid/8632


What planet is George living on?

The problem is, most conservatives look at economics the way they look at religion: if someone they think is important says something, that's good enough for them, and their prognostications become dogma. If you just repeat "tax breaks lead to economic growth and prosperity for all" or "social programs raise unemployment and make people less productive" enough times, they think it's a reliable as gravity. Proof? We don't need proof, because everyone believes it's true (which, ironically, is one of the principal factors of economic activity). Despite the fact that most of Milton Friedman's theories have been debunked and outright disproved (with disastrous consequences for many economies), conservatives and libertarians latch onto his philosophy as though he were a prophet.

You are fooling yourself if you think Any of those in Leadership in either party is a Conservative, or a traditional Liberal for that matter.

It doesn't take a genius to know that balancing the budget would solve most of our problems.

A Jackson was the last President to eliminate the national debt,
so tell me, when was the last time a sitting president spent less than was brought in?

U.S. Stocks Drop for Third Week as Recession Speculation Builds

By Elizabeth Stanton

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks fell for a third straight week, the longest streak since August, after forecasts from AT&T Inc., American Express Co. and Tiffany & Co. bolstered speculation that the six-year economic expansion is ending.

AT&T dropped the most since 2003 on the New York Stock Exchange after saying customer demand weakened. American Express had the steepest loss since September 2001 after adopting a "cautious view'' for the year. Tiffany tumbled the most in 5 1/2 years on slower holiday sales. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists said the U.S. may already be in a recession, joining counterparts at Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch & Co.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 0.8 percent to 1,401.02 this week, bringing its year-to-date loss to 4.6 percent for the worst start since 1982, according to Bloomberg data. The measure fell to an almost 10-month low on Jan. 8. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 1.5 percent to 12,606.30. The Nasdaq Composite Index declined 2.6 percent to 2,439.94.

"We certainly have another couple of months to go before we see the bottom of this thing,'' said Richard Weiss, who helps manage about $60 billion as chief investment officer at City National Bank in Beverly Hills, California. "The duration of the downturn is still unknown.''

See full report at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=home

How Republicans Have Proven Themselves to Be Bad For a Good Economy
By JOHN W. DEAN

Feb. 08, 2008

Our country's best and brightest economists have, for over a decade now, been traveling the land to warn of the coming economic crisis. Championing this cause are a number of former government officials, both Republicans and Democrats, who have gathered at the Concord Coalition. Former senators Sam Nunn and Warren Rudman, former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former Secretary of the Treasury (during the Clinton Administration) Bob Rubin, and former Secretary of Commerce (during the Nixon Administration) Peter Peterson together constitute the bipartisan coalition.
Peterson, a founding partner in the Blackstone Group, which manages some $80 billion dollars for investors, started the Concord Coalition in 1992. He knows his way around the economy, and since the Reagan and Bush I years, he has been expressing his concern about the way Republicans have handled it.

Fiscal responsibility, however, is no longer the guiding conviction of Republican leaders. For the last quarter century, since Ronald Reagan arrived in the White House, Peterson writes, Republican leaders have been oblivious to the devastation that deficits bring. "Deficits have become like aspirin," he explains of their thinking, "a sort of fiscal wonder drug. We should take them regularly just to stay healthy and take lots of them whenever we're feeling out of sorts." (Peterson doesn't say it, but while aspirin is not lethal, it can be deadly when you are bleeding badly, as is our economy.)

Peterson devotes a chapter to explaining "How the Republicans Got Us Much Deeper [With Democratic Help]" - with their tax-cutting mania and undisciplined spending. And he finds George W. Bush's performance "breathtaking" in his ability to turn what was a projected federal surplus of $5.6 trillion, when he arrived, upside down and into an even greater deficit. It is not easy to dispose of over $10 trillion. As Peterson also notes, hard accounting numbers would show that, in fact, the deficit is even greater than Bush projects, and the problems created by excessive government debt are exacerbated by the failure of Americans generally to save, rather to opt for personal debt.

Republicans and Democrats Have Changed Places on Fiscal Responsibility, with Democrats Now Better Suited to Repair the Damaged Economy

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jeffrey Frankel, an MIT-trained economist, has examined and documented the ironic but now conspicuous change in the economic philosophies of presidents of the contemporary Democratic and Republican Parties. Comparing the records of Presidents Carter and Clinton with that of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II provides the evidence at which voters should look in 2008.

Professor Frankel's fascinating study points out that the turnaround extends far beyond the Republican presidents creating deficits and Democrats creating surpluses, or in Carter's case, holding down the deficit. He notes that while Republicans claim to be inflation fighters, "in practice, Presidents Reagan and the first Bush pressured the Fed to ease up on monetary policy - sufficiently so that Paul Volcker decided the chairmanship was no longer worth having in 1987" and threatened to leave. In comparison, President Clinton "deliberately and unprecedentedly" allowed Alan Greenspan do his job without pushing him.

Not only are the Democrats better for business, they are more likely to be able to start the heavy lifting of repairing the damage done by too many years of Republican rule.

http://www.concordcoalition.org/news/artic...indlaw-0208.htm