"mikee" wrote in message
...


Ed Huntress wrote:

SNIP

In fact, it's now accepted that it began in March 2001, more than a year
after Bush took office.

Ed,

I don't know if you or someone else posted the above statement (a problem
with
long running threads sometimes) and I don't profess to be any kind of
economics
expert but this statement is incorrect.

GW Bush was elected in November 2000, and inaugrated on Jan 20, 2001.
March
2001 is 2 months after, not "more than a year."

Ah, you're dead right, Mike. I always mix up years of election and years of
inauguration.

However, the absurd part of that quote was that a growth rate of 3.8% for
the year 2000 "confirms" that the recession was due to Clinton policies. The
recession didn't even begin until Bush's term.

None of which says that the recession was Bush's fault *or* Clinton's fault.
Presidents don't have a lot to do with recessions. As I said earlier, this
last recession was a normal downswing of the business cycle. The silliness
started when someone said five or six years ago that business cycles were a
thing of the past. Obviously, they're not.

Ed Huntress