{"id":61734,"date":"2017-01-17T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61734"},"modified":"2017-01-14T18:41:34","modified_gmt":"2017-01-15T00:41:34","slug":"fake-economic-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61734","title":{"rendered":"Fake Economic News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As Joel Kotkin points out, Donald Trump faces two major hurdles. \u00a0One is the structural mess Barack Obama left; a shallow, fragile &#8220;prosperity&#8221; (nonetheless called a &#8220;boom&#8221; by the Democrat media) built on hoarding low-interest cash.<\/p>\n<p>The second? \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/joelkotkin\/2017\/01\/13\/heres-what-could-trip-up-trumps-quest-to-make-the-u-s-economy-great-again\/#4beb80f32411\">The perception that the media is pumping out that this potemkin prosperity is actually a &#8220;boom&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0(emphasis added):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yet this is more a matter of perception than reality, a kind of \u201cfake news.\u201d To be sure, President Barack Obama inherited a disastrous economy from George W. Bush and can claim, with some justification, that on his watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/12\/02\/business\/economy\/jobs-report.html?_r=2\" target=\"_blank\">millions of jobs<\/a> were restored and the economy achieved steady, if unspectacular, growth. Under Obama <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/donald-trumps-pro-business-stance-inspires-but-economic-growth-isnt-assured-1483551580\" target=\"_blank\">average GDP growth<\/a> has been <strong>almost twice as high as under his predecessor, but roughly half that of either President Reagan or Clinton<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(And, lest anyone forget, &#8220;under Clinton&#8221; really means &#8220;under Gingrich&#8221;, since Clinton showed every sign of being no \u00a0better than Obama for his first two years).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Less appreciated, however, are the fundamental long-term weaknesses in the U.S. economy that Obama and Bush have left for Trump. A recent report from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.compete.org\/storage\/reports\/gallup_norecovery_final_report_120516.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Council on Competitiveness<\/a> details a litany of profound, lingering flaws &#8212; historically slow growth, rising inequality, stagnant incomes, slumping productivity and declining lifespans. As the report concludes: \u201cThe Great Recession may be over, but America is dangerously running on empty.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Like everything by Kotkin, it&#8217;s worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Joel Kotkin points out, Donald Trump faces two major hurdles. \u00a0One is the structural mess Barack Obama left; a shallow, fragile &#8220;prosperity&#8221; (nonetheless called a &#8220;boom&#8221; by the Democrat media) built on hoarding low-interest cash. The second? \u00a0The perception that the media is pumping out that this potemkin prosperity is actually a &#8220;boom&#8221;\u00a0(emphasis added): [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,367],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61734","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=61734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61735,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61734\/revisions\/61735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}