Quote:
Originally Posted by lustylad
Economists define a recession as two consecutive quarterly declines in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP.
Here is a link showing the GDP data... you can see that GDP shrank slightly in Q3 2000 but recovered in Q4, then declined for the first 3 quarters of 2001. So the economy was obviously sputtering in Slick Willy's last year in office, but it nevertheless ducked the technical definition of a recession.
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/rec2001.htm
I would tend to be skeptical of any claims that the BLS was "cooking the books" in its employment data. For a number of reasons, economists and statisticians are not as easy to corrupt as DOJ attorneys or IRS employees. Here is a link to the BLS archives, including its monthly news releases. Which numbers are you talking about?
http://www.bls.gov/schedule/archives/empsit_nr.htm |
The economic decline began at the end of the 1st quarter of 2000. The reporting was consistent with most of the reporting today regarding how well the economy was doing..... avoiding and distorting the reality.
The unemployment numbers for September 2000 were the same (I mean identical in all categories) to the numbers for October 2000. The AFL-CIO website posted corrected numbers based on the reported data in December 2000.
Over the holidays Cheney was talking about the first order of business was to address the economic downturn of 2000. Litigation was still pending over the election .... Clinton went ballistic in the media claiming Cheney was being irresponsible and not telling the truth. By the 2nd quarter of 2001 economists were agreeing that the economic downturn began the 2nd 1/4 of 2000.
Subsequently, the method of computing unemployment was changed, which spread backward to do comparisons may have modified the historical numbers. The Obaminable administration has also changed the method of reporting by the manner of treating the category of jobs based on hours worked. Example: now a person working two part time jobs is reported as two fulltime jobs and those whose work hours have been reduced to 30 are considered fulltime. That's why careful analysis looks at per cap income/earnings as opposed to "job holdings."
BTW: the adjustment of hours is to avoid Obamacare mandates.
"cooking the books" is manipulating the data to reflect the desired result, and we see that occasionally when a headline hits and then a month or two later there is an "adjustment" of the employment data that hits the back page.
The Clinton administration not only "cooked" the books on the economy, but did so on the "surplus," as well as intelligence.
Just like the Obaminable Administration has done. the difference is that for most of the Clinton administration people were "satisfied" with the economy (until the tech-pharmaceutical bubble burst).
An example of the "fluff" in the economy and health of corporate American was Enron, which accelerated 10 fold in 2000 on paper, without oversight or inquiry. Those who put all their eggs in the Enron basket got burned.
So, laughably but sadly, Obamacare has "increased jobs" by requiring employees who want to work to take another job to pay their bills .... if they can find one. So they get counted as "2" in the stats.
