What's with this
Shultz Op/Ed. Is it the obligatory Right response to Krugman?
He's got this nice chart(in the extended section) that he says illustrates that GW inherited a recession from Clinton. From Shultz: "When you look at the record, a quick summary is this: President Clinton inherited prosperity; President Clinton bequeathed recession."
Anybody want to take a crack at this one. I'm no economist and I'm not really sure how he crunches numbers on this one, but something seems really fishy to me.
Chart:
And a parting shot from Shultz: The 2001 recession was short and shallow, with employment - always a lagging indicator - the last part of the economy to rebound. The employment picture has been a little puzzling since the two main surveys - one asks existing establishments how many people are on their payrolls, and the other asks people in a large sample of households whether they have jobs - show slightly different patterns. In any case, by now a third piece of the record appears clear: the recession President Clinton left behind has turned into prosperity under George W. Bush
Prosperity, hmmmm. That's interesting. It seems that every economic indicator has been limping, and that every forecast of recovery has had to be scaled back down after the actual numbers come in. Like all those jobs numbers that shrink after the intial announcements. Let's see: oil prices at an all-time high, trillion dollar debt, lowest June level of consumer spending in years, net loss of jobs(around a million still?), and the stock market is hitting the skids. This is prosperity?
What in the hell was Shultz smoking?
Or, of course, I may be way off on this one. In that case, what the hell am I smoking?
So what gives here?