comaparing Reagan's recession to Obama's is nonsense - Klein - WaPo

[JohnWxy]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/spin_one_for_the_gipper.html


Spin one for the Gipper


I expect some simplification and spin when political pundits discuss economics, but experts are generally more careful, if only for the sake of their own credibility. So I was surprised to read Dan Mitchell, Cato's tax policy guy, offer this "slam-dunk comparison" between Reagan and Obama:

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Financial crises, as Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt have exhaustively documented, are different than normal recessions. And global financial crises are different than domestic financial crises (it's hard to export your way out, for instance. We could spend a long time talking about why that is, but for our purposes, the point is what it does: "The recovery after deep financial crises tends to be slower and more protracted than for a garden variety recession," Rogoff says. And by that measure, how's Obama doing?

"By most measures, the U.S. is just driving down the tracks of a typical post-WW II deep financial crisis," Rogoff e-mailed, "at least according to the benchmarks for unemployment, housing prices, government debt and stock prices given in chapter 14 of my book with Reinhart 'This Time Its Different.' One dimension where the U.S. did somewhat better was the peak to trough decline in output of roughly 4% versus 9% for the average."

In other words, we're mostly following the trend, though we managed to blunt the normal decline in output. If you want to compare Reagan to someone, you should look at Clinton, who also entered office amidst a traditional recession. But Reagan doesn't look too good in that match-up.

.. and as I have pointed out before, a comparison of Obama to Reagan on Approval rating sensitivity to increase in Unemployment rate shows Obama's rating doing better than Reagan's - even though this is the Republican GREAT RECESSION rather than Reagan's more typical recession.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=549608

[Tempest]

1. When did it become Obama's recession?

This is something he inherited from Bush.

[JohnWxy]

2. but mainstream media wants us to forget about Bush. It's ALL Obama's doing!