Revising Michelle Malkin’s Benchmarking of Obama and His Party
UPDATE, Feb. 20 — Thanks to the Anchoress for the link. The BizzyBlog backroom comment reviewer (i.e., me) inadvertently hit the delete button (twice! the help these days). That’s probably just as well, in that her posts have been on fire during the past week, and deserve special notice for that.
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Michelle’s benchmarking of the stock market as of Election Day to monitor the performance of Barack Obama and his party is fine as far as it goes.
Bit it ignores the destructive impact of Nancy Pelosi, Obama and Harry Reid that commenced in earnest in June of last year.
As faithful readers know, sometime in June 2008 is when The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy (now officially “The POR Recession” as normal people define “recession” since the 4th quarter GDP report came out a few weeks ago) kicked in.
The real benchmarks for accountability as of today’s close, comparing June 1, 2008 to today, are as follows:
- Unemployment — was 5.5% as of the May 2008 BLS report); now at 7.6%.
- Dow Jones Industrial Average — was at 12638, closed today at 7553, down 40.2%.
- S&P 500 — was at 1400, closed today at 789, down 43.6%.
- NASDAQ — was at 2523, closed today at 1471, down 39.3%.
- GDP Growth — was 2.06% in the 12 months preceding July 1, 2008; has been an annualized -2.15% since (-0.5% in the third quarter, -3.8% advance estimate for the fourth).
- Inflation — was 4.2% in the 12 months ended May 31, 2008; prices have dropped 3.0% in the seven reported months since then (through December), and are up 0.8% in those seven months excluding food and energy.
- Prime rate — was 5.0%, is now 3.25%.
Throwing a bunch of whoppers at the problem doesn’t seem to be helping.
Sorry Tony B, you don’t get to abuse the blogger on his own blog. Start your own, and you can abuse me to your heart’s content. Around here, you’re going to have to specifically tell me why I’m wrong with evidence.
I didn’t say Bush was blameless. I said the Pelosi-Obama-Reid Economy and its overwhelmingly negative influences began in June 2008. Because it did, and they did.
Comment by TBlumer — February 18, 2009 @ 12:32 am
Let us not forget that in the first month (January 2007) the Democrats took control of Congress promising to lower the price of gas the unemployment rate started it’s climb. The Democrat leadership of Pelosi and Reid, broke their promise and gasoline prices didn’t stop rising until last year when the economy started going down in July and August. Classic supply and demand response to high prices.
My only faulting of Bush was his less than vigorous stance on the illegal immigration issue. IMO, his part was allow the problem to increase up to 13 million illegals to occupy US jobs. Clinton started the process in earnest when in the last two years of his admin. his cronies effectively threw open the doors of the southern border indicated by the drop in arrests. Bush compounded that policy by allowing Clinton cronies to stay in office until we made a huge stink and the problems became undeniable. IMO and possibly unrealistic, had Bush gone aggressive on the illegal issue by matching the IRS and SS records to flag those SS#s with problems, they could have easily caused the self deportation of at least half the illegals thus unemployment would have stayed down.
The house overbuilding and therefore the mortgage crisis wouldn’t have been as bad if it were not for builders using illegals to help with the construction boom. The shortage of domestic labor would have limited supply and kept the price of existing homes up.
Bubbles are like ponzi schemes. The problem with all bubbles occurs when the little people get into the act and then they being the last ones to enter the frenzy get screwed. In this case the taxpayer and banks are left holding the bag because in the Democrats eyes “it’s not fair”.
To be fair everyone shares the blame in some proportion, however, the Democrats bear the lion’s share. Since they have no intention of undoing their foolish polices, all the causes of the current situation still exist and will therefore intensify the problem. Nibbling at the edges of the problem by mitigation using bailouts, social programs and public work programs guarantees certain failure. But failure is success by definition of the Democrat party. Without failure there can be no victims and if there are no victims then the Dems lose their constituency and eventually their position of power. Democrats are the worst kind of Codependents – their reason for existence requires failure.
Comment by dscott — February 18, 2009 @ 9:53 am
#1 I’ve told you repeatedly exactly how you’re wrong with the “evidence” (it’s a stretch to call what you use “evidence”), and you simply ignore it. Funny how that works.
Comment by Invictus — February 18, 2009 @ 6:45 pm
I don’t ignore it. I have better and more valid evidence, not all of which has been disclosed or assembled or brought out of mothballs and prior posts.
Maybe I should give in and date the POR Economy back to December 2007. Because the trash-talking goes back that far. The trash-talking combined with energy starvation combined with specific proposals in the face of weakness to tax the daylights out of the productive began in June. I said that business people had started battening down the hatches, and funny, that’s exactly what they did.
But no, the economy was surviving the trash-talking until June. That’s why the POR Economy starts then. Whine all you want.
Comment by TBlumer — February 18, 2009 @ 11:06 pm
#5, Sorry Tony B. Specific arguments, yes. Name-calling, no.
Comment by TBlumer — February 22, 2009 @ 6:37 am
[...] where we were in May of 2008, and consider what happened in June of that [...]
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