Oh, before anything else, our new McCain Flip-Flop Master List appears to be a minor hit, drawing over 3,000 hits in just three days... and growing! For that reason, I've created a new, easy to remember subdomain just for the page: flipflop.bi30.org. Bookmark it!I actually started writing this blog entry back on January 27th following a series of triple-digit plunges in the DOW that took the DJIA from 13,261.82 on January 2, 2008 to 11,971.19 on January 27, 2008... just 248 points above the Clinton peak of 11,722.98 on January 14, 2000. Expecting the trend to continue, I prepared to report that the DOW, after seven years of Bush-o-nomics, experienced a Net Gain of Zero... or worse. But instead, seeing the 11K figure threw the Market into "bargain" mode and the Market rebounded to level off in the mid 12,000 range. And there it stayed until just this past week.
As of June 20th, the DOW had lost
almost 1000 points in a month (from 13,026 on May 20th to 12,062 on Friday, June 20th). The following Monday, the DOW closed below 12,000 points for the first time since January. The DOW lost another fraction of a point on Monday and an additional 34 points on Tuesday to remain below 12,000 and now stands at
just 85 points above the Clinton peak of 2000.Yes, after seven years of Republican "Bush-o-nomics",
the DJIA has gained a whopping 85 points. Compare 3,271.12
the day Bill Clinton took office on January 20, 1993 to
10,448.40 on June 23, 2000... the same point in Clinton's second term as Bush is at now. An increase of 7,177 points to Bush's paltry 85 point gain (a difference of 8440%). All hail Conservative economic policies! Republicans like to misdirect credit for the Clinton economy to the "tech bubble" (which incidentally was the result of that darned "
Internets" thing they gave us), but we had a "bubble" under Bush too... the "housing bubble"... spurred on by
outrageous and recklessly low interest rates... and the DOW reacted nothing like it did under the Clinton economy.
Republicans used to deride the "Clinton Bull Market", saying that "if
THEY had been in charge, the market would have done
even better". So then the American people voted to put Republicans in charge of BOTH the White House AND the Congress... and the result In seven years? Nearly doubling
the National Debt,
record unemployment,
$4 a gallon gasoline and
$136/barrel oil that is pushing the price of
everything through the roof, two wars without end and
threats of a third on the way (Iran).
<...>
As I've repeated on here
many -
MANY times before, the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) hit a record high of 11722.98 in January of 2000 before the Republicans running for President... namely George W Bush...
talked the economy into a recession because they knew they could not defeat
VP Al Gore unless they convinced Americans that the economy "wasn't as great as everyone thinks". And as the economic nose-dive became a self-fulfilling prophecy, Governor Bush was more & more able to point and say, "See! I told ya' so!". Between January 20th of 2000 and Inauguration Day, January 20th of 2001, the DOW lost 667 points, prompting newly elected President Bush to complain he had been "handed a recession" upon entering office. Compare that to the record peak of 14,000 points last July to Tuesday's close of 11807, a loss of
2,200 points in just 11 months, to which the
Bush Administration denies is evidence of
their second Recession in seven years.As recently as
last October, former presidential candidate
Fred Thompson was still calling the Bush economy:
"the greatest story never told". Well, he certainly got the "story" part right, though I'd rephrase that as "fairy tale".
The very basis for the "privatization of Social Security" argument was the meteoric rise of the Stock Market under the Clinton Administration. Republicans argued that "had Americans of been allowed to invest that money in the stock market instead of Social Security, they would of seen an 11%-12% return on their investment instead of the paltry 3% return the government gives them.
But just imagine if the Bushies had gotten their way and all those people had invested half their retirement in the stock market instead of the DOW when Bush took office? After seven years, an 85 point increase amounts to a whopping 0.77% return (77cents for every $100) on your investment (to be fair, I won't factor in rampant inflation for a
Net Loss because inflation affects Social Security as well). The
very idea that anyone might still consider Republican policies better for the economy makes my head swim. What world have these people been living on for the past 16 years??? But that hasn't stopped even good Democrats from continuing to use the phrase "
fiscal Conservative" as a positive and "liberal" as a pejorative when it comes to economic issues.
<...>
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