Apparently, Clinton gets too much credit for good economy of 1990s

[Dpm12]

http://clinton.procon.org/

Funny isn't it how Republicans deny the truth. He was in office when the longest period of peacetime, post-war economic expansion in HISTORY occurred. Keep on dreaming braindead Re-pubes.

[hrmjustin]

1. How dare he do that.

Don't they know all good things come from St. Ronnie Reagan. The nerve of Clinton and his followers.

[w4rma]

2. Because of NAFTA, my hometown - a factory town - was broken. (nt)

[Populist_Prole]

3. +1

"Free trade" and all the offshoring that resulted really took off in the 90's. The 90's sure weren't good for me and my peers.

[amandabeech]

4. Clinton was fortunate enough to win the Presidency just before the tech bubble took off,

and took the stock market with it.

Widespread use of computers and the internet in everyday business and personal life was something really, really new then. Of course, now it's old hat.

Clinton and Gore encouraged and supported use of the internet, but they did not create it, and it would have happened to any president who could step back and let it happen. Of course, the Shrub might have been able to do something dopey to mess things up.

On the other hand, the stock market reacted as it has done to new things ever since the Tulip Bulb Mania several centuries ago. It way overshot the current time value of internet and computer stocks. Stock was coming on the market based only on someone's day dream and some money from venture capitalists. And, as usual, there was outright fraud in internet stocks. So much so that some fraudulent operations were hit by SEC "SWAT Squads."

What ever goes up in the stock market often comes down, at least some. Although the Dow and the S&P are up, the stocks that comprise these two measures keep changing. The poor performers are tossed out and good performers are added. The NASDAQ market, tough, has not regained the heights that it hit in early 2000. It is filled with tech stocks that soared so high and then feel to earth.

In sum, Clinton was very lucky to become President when he did, as far as the stock market was concerned.

Call me a braindead Re-pube, but I was there, worked for tech companies, and watched Alan Greenspan call the whole tech bubble "irrational exuberance."

I wish that I could say that Bill Clinton and Al Gore made the tech bubble happen, but in all honesty, I can't.

[madokie]

5. Jus think how it could have been

if not for the pukes working against him every step of the way. As the big dog put it one day when whoever was interviewing him and they mentioned what you've just said and Bill looked at the camera and said and that was without one republicon vote, put his finger up then and said let me reiterate, without one republicon vote. Yeah things could have been much better had they not spent the whole time trying to destroy him. Same as they're doing now with President O. They don't learn.
Actually the pukes who vote for them are the ones who doesn't learn cause if they did they'd not be voting a republicon ticket now,
We've got a lot of crazy and a shit pot full of stupid in this country right now.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Clinton does get too much credit

he got lucky; that economic expansion would have happened no matter who was in office. Clinton's presidency coincided with the expansion of new industry with the arrival of the internet and computers going from toys to mass consumer appliance...which led to an economic bubble of overinvestment in the tech sector and hundreds or thousands of new ventures, most of which collapsed (which is the same pattern followed by the last great technological expansion in the 1920's). And in the meantime thanks to NAFTA and most favoured trading status for China American industry was progressively hollowed out and millions of jobs in manufacturing were lost to be replaced with service industry work if they were replaced at all--I happen to remember seeing quite a few textile plants boarded up as the owners shipped the jobs off to China in the midst of this this supposedly "good economy"; there were seven hundred thousand jobs lost in the textile industry between 1994 and 2002, by the way. (That's now over a million.) Sorry, but as far as that "great economy" goes? Clinton is the Calvin Coolidge of the 1990's.

[Drunken Irishman]

8. haha, we replied at the same time with nearly the same points.

Right down to comparing him to Calvin Coolidge. Scary.

[Drunken Irishman]

7. Clinton does get too much credit for the economy...

He helped it, to be sure, but yeah, he wasn't the only reason of the economic recovery of the 1990s.

1) George H.W. Bush working with Democrats to raise new taxes in the early 90s helped establish a foundation for the recovery. It took a couple years to present itself, but it was a big reason why we exited out of a recession in '92 and started the full recovery in '93.

2) The internet basically recharged the economy. That was a huge development and invention for the world that had such a positive impact on the economy of the United States. I really can't think of anything comparable in modern times (maybe the automobile) that altered nearly every facet of the way we lived, worked and communicated. The internet created the tech bubble, which exploded growth in the mid-90s and led to one of the best stretches of economic advancement in American history. Of course, it went pop in 2000 and we've been struggling ever since.

I think Clinton rode bubble economics way too much in the 90s. Those type of economic gains are almost always temporary and we witnessed just how temporary the last few years since the tech bubble burst - as the stock and housing bubbles have popped since.

Clinton pulled back regulations and allowed the economy to grow unchecked ... similar, I hate to say it, to what we saw in the 1920s under Calvin Coolidge. Like Coolidge, though, the bottom fell out shortly after he left office and not during his presidency, so, he doesn't receive much of the blame.

Not to diminish the Clinton presidency. But the reality is, Clinton's economic record is a great deal skill and also a great deal 'right place, right time'.

[cdsilv]

9. The 'Y2K' bug fixes that EVERY business had to apply helped fuel the 'tech bubble'....

....having been involved in the efforts, I watched big businesses FORCED to spend lots of $$$$$$$ fixing every computer and application to deal with this problem. The CFO's were not happy, but they spent the money anyway. When the clock ticked over to 1/1/2000 with little or no disruption, lots of jobs went away quickly.

[EastKYLiberal]

10. It's not helpful to Democrats to push this meme...

So when someone asks me... I will continue to give Clinton all the credit.

[Populist_Prole]

11. It's even less helpful for Democrats to adopt the policies of the GOP

'The Third Way' and all that. I will give Clinton the credit for being responsible for a large part of the erosion of the US industrial base due to his ( then ) very enthusiastic support of free trade agreements.

It's not I'm going to vote republican, and he did give a helluva speech at the Democratic national convention last Sept, but let's not unconditionally accept the concept of being a team player. Gotta' keep the team honest afterall.

[Dpm12]

12. Clinton is

better than Ol' Ron or any of those dickheads the Republicans worship now