I find myself more and more these days trying to give historical context to current events, to clarify current events for the various millennials in my life.<\/p>\n
Here’s a big one: \u00a0while the media is turning cartwheels about the “Obama Recovery” (happening an unprecedented eight years after the crash – worse than the Great Depression), the\u00a0best\u00a0<\/em>quarter of GDP growth in this “recovery” is lower than the\u00a0worst\u00a0<\/em>quarter of Reagan’s recovery, from 1983 through 1987.<\/p>\n But never mind – the media will keep the narrative of Obama the Economic Lightworker warm and dry.<\/p>\n But with Hillary Clinton in the picture, there’s another wrinkle. \u00a0 John Hinderaker notes at Powerline (with some emphasis added):<\/p>\n n 1992, Bill Clinton announced that \u201cIt\u2019s the economy, stupid.\u201d That was pretty much the sole theme of his campaign. He ludicrously claimed that the country was then experiencing \u201cthe worst economy since the Great Depression,\u201d a lie that the press, to its everlasting shame, not just allowed but often endorsed. So what was the level of GDP growth that Clinton relentlessly denigrated?<\/p>\n According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the quarterly growth numbers for 1992, in chained 2009 dollars, were 4.8%, 4.5%, 3.9% and 4.1%.<\/strong> That\u2019s right\u2013the growth that Bill Clinton derided as the \u201cworst economy since the Great Depression\u201d was around four times what we are now seeing under Barack Obama<\/strong>. And Hillary Clinton promises to continue Obama\u2019s anti-growth policies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I remember the recession at the tail end of the Bush 41 administration – as the economy adjusted from a Cold War economy to civilian spending – very well; it slowed down my transition from radio to IT by a few harrowing months when I was welcoming a couple of new children into the world. \u00a0But it was a short recession with a sharp recovery (“Thanks, Ronald Reagan, for that “peace dividend!”) that led to 15 mostly-prosperous years…<\/p>\n …whose various windfalls are long in the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I find myself more and more these days trying to give historical context to current events, to clarify current events for the various millennials in my life. Here’s a big one: \u00a0while the media is turning cartwheels about the “Obama Recovery” (happening an unprecedented eight years after the crash – worse than the Great Depression), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-the-great-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60115,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60114\/revisions\/60115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}