Posted: Apr 15th 2003, 7:29 pm
I guess need you to address for me the evils of "Big Oil". From my limited understanding of how the this world works, oil makes the world go round. Without it the entire worlds economy goes in the dumper. So is it any mystery that one of the goals of our government is to make sure their is a stable supply of this resource.
Hey if a corporation doctors the books and such I'll be right there with ya demanding those responsible. But these issues you are raising are not holding water. If they were you would be seeing far more about it. Or is the BBC and CNN part of the Skull and Bones as well?
Now as for the Clinton prosperity here are some facts:
Hey if a corporation doctors the books and such I'll be right there with ya demanding those responsible. But these issues you are raising are not holding water. If they were you would be seeing far more about it. Or is the BBC and CNN part of the Skull and Bones as well?
Now as for the Clinton prosperity here are some facts:
1) The National Bureau of Economic Research reports that in the year 2000 we were in the 18th year of one long wave of prosperity. It began in 1982 with the supply-side policies of Reagan - tax-rate cuts, sound money, deregulation, free trade, and victory in the cold war. Michael Cox of the Dallas Federal Reserve Board has found that over the past 200 months, since the Reagan prosperity began, the economy has been in recession just eight months, or just four percent of the time.
2) The bullish stock market began in 1982, not in 1992. Then, the Dow Jones was at 800. In 2000 it was at 11,000. ( mglenn note: today it's at 8402, the fall came from the internet bubble and was no fault of any president. )
3) It is also instructive to examine the stock market during the Clinton presidency. From 1993-95 the Dow rose from 3,200 to 3,800. But from 1995 to 2000 the Dow rose from 3,800 to 11,000. About 90 percent of the gain in asset values happened after the Republicans
took control of Congress and the markets were assured that Clintonomics would be curtailed.
4) Interest rates and inflation began their long-term tumble in the early 1980s. In 1980 mortgage interest rates hit 20 percent and the inflation rate hit eleven percent. Since the early 1980s inflation has fallen by roughly a half a percent per year. There were three people responsible for the lowering of inflation and interest rates: Reagan, Paul Volker, and Alan Greenspan.
5) Clinton boasts that his world record tax increase in 1993 caused interest rates to fall. Actually, from 1993 through November of 1994 (when Republicans won control of Congress), interest rates rose by 50 basis points.
6) When Bill Clinton entered office the economy was growing at a four percent rate (4th quarter of 1992). After Clinton's tax hike, the economy stalled to a 2.6 percent rate.
7) After two years of Clintonomics, the budget deficit was still well over $200 billion. In early 1995 the budget deficit was projected by the Congressional Budget Office to remain over $200 billion for as far as the eye could see. So much for the idea that Clinton's $500 billion tax hike balanced the budget. What changed this gloomy outlook on the budget? The GOP balanced budget plan in 1995. Who can forget 1995? In that year Bill Clinton closed down the government twice to avoid the Republican's balanced budget and the White House was forced to submit five budgets until he finally proposed one without a deficit.
To be sure, Bill Clinton does deserve some of the credit for this astonishingly resilient expansion. Where his policies have been most productive - for example, in promoting free-trade agreements, signing the Republican welfare reforms, cutting the capital-gains tax, and allowing Alan Greenspan to smother the last remnants of inflation in the financial system - he has sensibly followed the economically liberating path laid out by Reagan.