Nutty Fudge
June 10, 2004
Okay...we’ll try this once more. I was once told by a magazine’s managing editor that whenever I write about the economy, “With the exception of three maladjusted accountants, most readers will beg off ...for fear of drowning in a sea of figures.” But, as I just said, we’ll try this once more.
Liberals compensate for a lack of rationality with lies. Liberals hate facts. With no logical proof for their positions, liberals are left with no choice except fudging the truth and repeating it ad nauseam. No matter how much our economy improves, the liberals want a bad economy (just like they “want” almost everything). Since they have no ideas, the only way the liberals hope to beat President Bush is by trying to convince you that the economy is “the worst since the Great Depression”...and that Iraq is a “quagmire”.
On Friday June 4, the Labor Department announced that the economy added 248,000 new jobs in May. Or, as the Times (New York Times) sees it, “John Kerry, is in danger of losing the edge on one of his prime criticisms of the president: that the economy has failed to generate jobs in significant numbers....” Faced with the prospect of a wilting Kerry, the Times dragged out its stable of erratic “experts” en mass.
In the face of a declining deficit and strong economic growth, the Times cautions its readers that, “Despite the strong hiring pace, the unemployment rate remained at 5.6 percent....” This is like saying that “despite the fact it’s a warm sunny day outside, it remains warm and sunny outside”. The Times doesn’t tell you that a 5.6% unemployment rate is NORMAL. God forbid that anything should get between the Times and its desire that President Bush becomes, “...the first chief executive since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in jobs during a four-year term.”
Just to keep you confused, William C. Dudley, director of domestic economic research for Goldman Sachs, confusingly notes “That makes May the strongest jobs report of the last three months, even though it had the lowest number of jobs created.” Dudley is the same “expert” who, in July 2003, wrongly advised that, “If the tax cuts were designed to stimulate the economy, they’ve come up with an awful bad set of tax cuts.” For the last three quarters, the economy has expanded at a 20 year record growth of a 5.6% because of those tax cuts.
To keep you in fear, James Glassman, senior economist at JP Morgan Securities, cautions that “If full employment is reached when the unemployment rate is 4 percent, which I consider the appropriate measure, then we are 6 million jobs below that.” Glassman, who is listed by the FEC as a donor to the Democratic National Committee, is the nuttiest fudger of them all.
“Full” employment is a preposterously “inappropriate” measure and Glassman knows it (assuming he passed Economics 101). Milton Friedman won the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics by shooting the “full” employment scenario full of holes. Friedman stated that “The best a nation can do is settle for the lowest level of unemployment that will not begin accelerating inflation”. He called this rate the “normal” or “non-accelerating inflation” rate of unemployment. Almost universally, economists estimate this rate to be slightly less than 6%. Isn’t 5.6% “slightly less than 6%”?
In a March 2003 Times article Glassman admitted that, “the Bush administration was ‘not at all’ responsible for the state of the economy.” He noted that “...the slowdown/moderate recession was the result of a perfect storm back in 2000” (i.e. during the Clinton administration). Glassman went on to suggest that, “...the administration deserves some credit, not blame, for the state of the economy. Without its actions, things might have been much worse than they are today.”
More to the point, the unemployment rates in the 4.5% range achieved during the Clinton years were all smoke and mirrors. They were artificially created with the trillions of dollars lost by investors in the stock market crash...and unsustainable. On March 10, 2000 the NASDAQ rose to a record 5048.62. By the end of the Clinton administration, the NASDAQ had settled to 2470.52. Clinton’s going away present to Wall Street and the investing public was an almost 50% decline in the NASDAQ.
The dollars you lost in the market were the same dollars that created un-needed jobs at companies that never produced anything. As assistant New York University professor, Vincenzo Quadrini, explained it in 2003, “'The current economic difficulties are the unavoidable consequences of the asset price bubble that started to burst in the first half of 2000”.
If, by chance, you might believe that there is record job creation underway, the Times happily throws a wet blanket on this...” Jared Bernstein, a senior labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute, argued yesterday... that we still have a problem of (job) quality to be worried about". Mr. Bernstein thinks that “lower-wage jobs had been expanding ...at the expense of higher-paying jobs."
Previously, in 2003, the Times described Bernstein as a senior economist at “a liberal research group” (you know...those partisan non-profits that violate the tax code). Back then, Bernstein was certain that, “...cutting taxes on the wealthy when the deficit is already soaring is a mistake” (read wealthy as anybody making over $30,000 a year). Bernstein was “...pretty nervous about the long-term implication of the deficits we’re building right now...They’re not smart deficits, they’re ideological deficits.” Can you imagine a liberal speaking about an ideological deficit!
Fred Barnes recently pointed out that “...the deficit is shrinking so quickly that the president...should be able to claim he's near to cutting the deficit in half--and not in five years, as he had promised, but in two.” Barnes additionally states that, “...the shrinking deficit is further evidence that the Bush tax cuts are working.” Looks like Berstein was “pretty nervous” over nothing...and more “ideological” than “smart”.
The Times should read its own archives. Last year it printed economic nonsense and this year it prints further nonsense from the same doom-patrol “experts”. In its quest to derail President Bush, the Times isn’t worried about little things like credibility. Just fudge the truth and repeat it ad nauseam.
Now come on everybody, repeat after me...”Bad economy...Bad economy...Bad economy”. Or should that read...”Jayson Blair...Jayson Blair...Jayson Blair”!
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