OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: Left Vs. Right On The Economy

Now the ugly truth about recessions. Since World War II, every Republican president has governed over a recession (Dwight Eisenhower had three; Richard Nixon had two, one he shared with Gerald Ford, and George W. Bush is building his second) while Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter are the only Democratic Presidents with a recession, and Carter's was the shortest (6 months), the mildest and caused more by the 1979 Oil Crisis following the Iran Revolution than by policy. The recession count for the Dem team (Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) 2. For the GOP team (Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush the Daddy and George Bush the Infantile) 9. And all this after the GOP gave us the Great Depression of the 1930s following recessions (during the Roaring Twenties for the wealthy) in 1923-24 for 14 months and 1926-27 for 13 months

Our recessions (according to Geoffrey H. Moore, director emeritus of the Center for International Business Cycle Research at Columbia University in New York City using data from.the National Bureau of Economic Research) have been:

* November 1948-October 1949; 11 months. Truman, and partly due to post-World War II readjustments from wartime to peacetime production.

* July 1953-May 54; 10 months. Eisenhower.

* August 1957-April 1958; 8 months. Eisenhower.

* April 1960-February 1961; 10 months, Eisenhower. Ike's last recession ran into the first months of Kennedy's administration but JFK got the nation righted quickly.

* December 1969- November 1970; 11 months. Nixon

* November 1973-March 1975; 16 months. Nixon and Ford. The recession began under Nixon but Ford prolonged it by cutting government spending, thereby starving the economy and preventing recovery.

* January 1980-June 1980; 6 months. Carter. And due more to an oil imbargo by Iran than by policy.

* July 1981-November 1982; 16 months. Reagan, and marked by an unemployment rate of 10.8%, the highest since 1940 when the nation was not yet out of the Great Depression.

* July 1990-March 1991; 8 months; Bush the Daddy

* March 2001-September 2001; 6 months; Bush the Infantile. The recession had achieved the six-month mark of economic contraction that establish an official recession by Sept. 1, before the terrorist attacks in New York and Arlington, VA, so we credit Bush the Infantile with a six-month recession and not the economic problems that followed even though Bush's recession could have dragged on much longer.

* The present recession is unfolding; Bush the Infantile.

The developing recession might have been cut short had government concentrated on rebuilding and repairing the nation's infrastructure, buying US-made automobiles, computers, software, office furniture and more rather than handing out rebates that may not be spent in the economy. Republicans claim individual spending would end a recession but government spending is only waste. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, Bush pleaded for everyone to head to the malls and spend, spend, spend. Now he offers us rebates to spend as if that would be a magical cure while government spending the same money would be a disaster even though buying could be directed at the weakest parts of the economy.

During most of the 20th Century the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by an average of about 10 percent annually, but under Democratic administrations the average has been in the 13-14 % range while only 6-7% under Republicans. And those figures don't include the spectacular rise in the Dow under Clinton.

Clinton was inaugurated on January 20, 1993, the day the Dow closed at 3242 and left office on January 20, 2001, when the Dow finished the day at 10,678.

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