The political party of doom has America in recession, and just like their global warming theory and other rhetoric, it just doesn’t match up to the facts. Meanwhile, Republicans are desperately trying to secure some improvement in the economy to make themselves look better.
In order for there to be a recession, two consecutive quarters there must be a total stop on economic growth. Yet while the economic growth only inched upward a mere .9%, economists expect that to be better in the second quarter around the corner. But then, to the average American, all of this is meaningless with gasoline at $4+ per gallon and other necessities of life are inching up along with it. To top it all, the average American’s wages doesn’t come close to the cost-of-living, despite Congressional promises that this will happen soon.
When President Reagan described the economic situation in America in 1980, when he first took office as an “economic depression” – he was laughed at. Jimmy Carter’s minions claimed that President Reagan was ignorant of the meaning of economic depression or recession. During a Labor Day campaign rally near the Statue of Liberty commending immigrants (legal immigrants), Ronald Reagan said:
Well, if it’s a definition he wants, I’ll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. Recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
In Donald Lumbro’s article Dems’ Recession Obsession a Mistaken Impression …
Last week, the Commerce Department reported that new home sales rose 3.3 percent in April, to a seasonally adjusted rate of 526,000 units. This unexpected increase came after months of steep declines in sales, suggesting that a turnaround could be imminent. The Commerce Department also said that durable goods orders slipped by a smaller-than-expected 0.5 percent. When transportation orders were excluded, factory orders increased 2.5 percent, the largest such increase in nine months. Notably, factory orders for electrical equipment and appliances rose by 27.8 percent, the biggest increase on record. Perhaps the most promising sign of all is the new home-sales increase, which suggests that lower prices and interest rates are drawing buyers back into the market. Housing prices are still too high. But they continue to decline as prospective buyers wait to scoop up bargains resulting from the subprime mortgage foreclosure debacle. … The soaring value of oil and record gas prices remain a huge drag on the economy, though oil costs will be somewhat offset by lower interest rates. A stronger dollar would help bring down oil prices, too. Meanwhile, the tax rebates and the Fed’s rate cuts are slowly working their way through the economy’s bloodstream. Democrats want us to believe the economy is in crisis, but it isn’t. We are in a sharp slowdown, one of many our country has experienced and overcome many times before. It is instructive to recall the economic upturn in the second half of 2003 in response to the Fed’s deep rate cuts when “stocks, bond yields and the economy all soared,” Malpass notes. At this point, there are glimmers of recovery that suggest this downturn may be shorter and shallower than anyone predicted. Americans are understandably pessimistic, in part by what is going on in their states and communities, but also due to a drumbeat of negative stories on the nightly television news, a gloomy oracle that sees nothing but doom ahead. Yet through it all, we remain the largest economy in the world, producing $14 trillion worth of goods and services each year, selling $1.4 trillion of stuff abroad in a vigorous global economy running flat-out on trade. We got whacked hard by the housing collapse and credit crunch, but it’s good to remember that we have a very resilient economy that has pulled us out of innumerable panics, recessions and depressions. We’ll grow and pull ourselves out of this downturn, too, a little wiser for the mistakes that were made. Things may appear a bit gloomy now, but there is every reason to be confident about America’s future.
