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Well, I’ve been looking up some info. I have been forming opinions. I might as well write it down.
The Economy
I’m unemployed. I am unemployed on W’s watch. I’d like to have a job. Yet I still think he should be re-elected. Why? Well, I’m a computer/math guy. Let’s look at the facts.
Okay, well first let me tell you what these facts are going to tell you. A national economy is a big animal. It takes a while to make it move, and a lot of what a president gets is what he inherits. So we’re going to look back a little bit. We’re going to look at trends.
First, we know the stock market is a great indicator of where the economy is going. Well, the Fact-Index gave me some great information on where that’s been going for the past few years. There’s a lot to be gleaned here, but here are some highlights.
The Dow Jones peaked on January 14, 2000 (11,723.00). The Nasdaq peaked on March 10, 2000 (5,048.62), on Clinton’s watch.
“As of September 24 [2002] the Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 27% of the value it had at the inauguration of George W. Bush, a total loss of 5 trillion dollars. …. It should be noted that the Dow Jones had already lost 9% of its value from its peak when Bush took office, and the Nasdaq had lost 44% of its value from its peak before Bush took office.” (emphasis added)
Did you see that? Before Bush took office, the Nasdaq was at nearly half it’s peak value. Still there’s a deficit. You should check out the rest of the info at this site. It’s more than I’ll talk about.
So back to the deficit in the markets. Well, that’s still 2002. The Dow closed Friday at 10,282.83. That is only 12% below the peak in 2000. Okay, that’s not great, but it’s improvement. The Nasdaq has seen a similar recovery. I can’t find the exact numbers, so I’m leaving it at that.
Second, for as long as the Department of Labor has been keeping statistics, there has been an economic downturn followed by an economic boom about every 8 years. We just came out of a boom. This is the downturn. But now it’s turning back upward.
Kerry likes to point out that 3 million jobs have been lost under Bush’s term. He fails to point out that those numbers are as of last June. In the past 12 months, over 1 million jobs have been created. It brings it to 2 million lost jobs. I know that’s still a big number, but those were for the vast part in the first year of the term. Remember 2001? We were already riding a downturn in the stock market when we suffered a terrorist attack that took more American lives than the Vietnam War. Nasty nasty year.
Check out this fly Excel graph I made with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are some important dates included there so you can see the unemployment trend along with key events affecting the economy.
So what am I saying in the end? The economy right now is pretty lousy. But I don’t think it can be blamed entirely on the current President. I’m optimistic about the direction the last 12 months of that unemployment chart and the stock market charts are going.