Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress want you to believe that right now, you are living in the worst economic crisis in American history, save for the Great Depression.
This is simply not true, and the New York Times explains how 1982 was far, far worse:
The job market will almost certainly continue to worsen for most of 2009. Even if the much-needed stimulus bill passes, the economy is likely to end the year in roughly as bad a shape as its 1982 nadir. Which is saying something.
The recession of the early 1980s doesn’t have a catchy name, and almost half of Americans are too young to have any real memory of it. But it was terrible — qualitatively different from the mild recessions of 1990-91 and 2001.
The first big blow to the economy was the 1979 revolution in Iran, which sent oil prices skyrocketing. The bigger blow was a series of sharp interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, meant to snap inflation. Home sales plummeted. At their worst, they were 30 percent lower than they are even now (again, adjusted for population size). The industrial Midwest was hardest hit, and the term “Rust Belt” became ubiquitous. Many families fled south and west, helping to create the modern Sun Belt.
Nationwide, the unemployment rate rose above 10 percent in 1982, compared with 7.2 percent last month.
The article goes on to say that at its worst, the unemployment rate right now is around 13%. But even that wasn’t as bad at the 16% seen in 1982.
So what is really interesting here is the fact that the New York Times is reporting this, backing off the doom and glooom perspective of the economy.
Why would they want to do that?
Well, they have the votes they need to pass the stimulus bill. Regardless of what is in it, it will pass (As Boortz writes, “this so-called “stimulus” bill is merely a compilation of years of Democrat spending schemes.”) And it will be signed by Obama.
They don’t need to be doom and gloom anymore. They won. They got their folks in office. Now they can start talking up the economy.
I’m just a right wing conspiracy loon, right? Not so much. There is a history of the media reporting on how bad the economy is when a Republican lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, but talking it up when a Democrat moves in.
Two professors, John Lott, economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Kevin A. Hassett, the Institute’s director of economic policy studies, looked at newspaper articles on the economy. They wrote, “We found that newspaper headlines reporting economic news on unemployment, gross domestic product (GDP), retail sales and durable goods tended to be much more frequently negative when a Republican was in the White House. And this was true even after accounting for the economic numbers on which the stories were based and how those numbers were changing over time.” So bad economic news becomes less bad economic news with a Democrat sitting in the White House. With a Republican in the White House, however, good economic news becomes less good, and bad becomes even worse.
There is entirely too much invested in the idea that Obama is going to rescue everyone from this horrible Bush economy. It’s time to get the American people thinking things are improving.
