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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / It’s The Economy, Stupid

It’s The Economy, Stupid

by John Cole|  July 21, 20034:56 pm| 8 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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Take this with the usual grain of salt:

A key measure of future economic activity increased slightly in June for the third month in a row, in line with analysts’ expectations.

The report lent support to the view among economists that the worst was over, although it did not alter their opinion that consumers and businesses still are on shaky ground.

The Conference Board reported Monday that its Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose by 0.1 percent in June to 111.8, after a 1.1 percent rise in May and a 0.1 percent rise in April. However, the board said it was too soon to declare the start of a period of steady economic growth.

“I still think we need to be a little cautious,” said Ken Goldstein, an economist for the board.

“But,” he added, “we may finally, after a year and a half delay, be moving into a real recovery.”

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8Comments

  1. 1.

    PG

    July 21, 2003 at 5:16 pm

    Cool. Does this mean that my friend with a double degree in English and physics from an excellent liberal arts college can find a decent job now? Monster.com keeps telling him that he could be making $40k, but they don’t say where, and so far only 7/11 has been interested.
    And to be really selfish, does this mean that the number of people applying to grad school because the job market is so unappealing will decrease before the admissions round for fall ’04?

  2. 2.

    John Cole

    July 21, 2003 at 5:22 pm

    PG- wow- what a nugget of whining liberalism. I guess I missed the memo where it said your friend DESERVED a job making 40k a year, and where it said it was the government’s responsibilty to be in charge of his job placement.

    BTW- go look up lagging indicators.

  3. 3.

    Andrew Lazarus

    July 21, 2003 at 5:28 pm

    Ah, but John, it’s the government’s huge deficits that will drive businesses out of the capital market when they want to expand. (The received view is that it is good to run deficits during the economic slowdown, but not, as Bush intends, as far as the eye can see.)

  4. 4.

    Dean

    July 21, 2003 at 5:34 pm

    Uh, where did businesses get their capital during the record deficits of the Reagan era? Or doesn’t that period of economic expansion count?

  5. 5.

    Jonas

    July 21, 2003 at 5:54 pm

    Dean

    There was much higher unemployment in the ’80s than there is now. In 1984, the unemployment rate broke 10%. With less people employed, businesses didn’t need as much capital (well maybe they needed, but it wasn’t available).

  6. 6.

    Andrew Lazarus

    July 22, 2003 at 1:19 am

    The (sad) truth is, Dean, that GDP grew less (as an annual average) under Reagan than under Jimmy Carter.

  7. 7.

    Art

    July 28, 2003 at 10:06 am

    Andrew,

    Using geometric averages and adjusting (imperfectly) for the effects of inflation, your claim is not supported.

    The high nominal GDP rate under Carter was due to multiple bouts of dollar devaluation from 1965-1977, and the high rate of inflation they caused.

    In the data you cite, the figures in the second column are ‘deflated’ using 1996 dollar prices as a benchmark. The results, when averaged geometrically, reveal that annualized GDP was virtually indistinguishable between the Carter and Reagan Admins (see below), and probably within the std of error for measurement and inflation adjustment methods.

    However, to anyone who lived through both periods, the qualitative differences were like night and day (day following night, that is).

    1977-1980: 3.252%
    1981-1984: 2.969%
    1985-1988: 3.699%
    1981-1988: 3.334%

  8. 8.

    Art

    July 28, 2003 at 10:37 am

    (Con’t) Quarterly numbers adjusted and annualized in the same way show greater disparity between the two:

    1978-1980: 2.814%
    1981-1984: 3.129%
    1985-1988: 3.74 %
    1981-1988: 3.434%

    If the 2Q78-4Q78 figures that resulted from Carter’s reluctant agreement to a cut in the capital gains rate are stripped out (as this policy originated with Congressional GOP), the quarterly average becomes 1.997%; and if you strip out 4Q80 as a reflection of positive toward Reagan policies, it falls to 1.567%.

    These are a bit indulgent, but I suspect they offset the distortion caused by complex lags in inflation measures. If dollar inflation had been measured in real time, I suspect that the Reagan years would beat the Carter years even more emphatically.

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