No one should be surprised when economic or budget forecasts coming out of Washington are influenced by politics, especially during an election year. But when economic history is rewritten -- with political consequences -- that's going too far. President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, chaired by Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw, is trying to get away with exactly such revisionist history. The CEA's Economic Report of the President, released Feb. 9, unilaterally changed the start date of the last recession to benefit Bush's reelection bid. Instead of using the accepted start date of March, 2001, the CEA announced that the recession really started in the fourth quarter of 2000 -- a shift that would make it much more credible for the Bush Administration to term it the "Clinton Recession." In a subsequent press conference, Mankiw said that the CEA had looked at the available data and "made the call."
Sigh, more...
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Seems to me the GOP claimed the economy was already turning around when Clinton took office, so the Clinton boom wasn't really his? So it was the Bush sr boom for almost 8 years, and then a Clinton recession?
I'm sure the dates are fuzzy. And this is NOT the first time, indeed not even the 10th time, the the GOP has renamed the past, rejected information. Indeed, the whole 9/11 scenario can be based on the truth that Bush was on missle defense, not terrorism his first half year, and that it quite consistent that anything else would be ignored.
Post a Comment