The Lonely Booming Economy

It sounds like a Grimms Brother’s Tale, doesn’t it?

Willisms takes it on. 5 million jobs in 30 months, and it’s still a “Rodney Dangerfield Economy” that can’t get no respect. No one wants to be its friend. Half the country denies it exists, even as they drive their shiny new cars to the restaurant to drink $8.00 cocktails after drinking the $4.00 coffees all day at work. After buying the latest CD, after seeing the latest play, after picking out their spring wardrobe, after planning this year’s vacation(s).

I have friends planning to go on a Disney Cruise, and they’re scouting out the big “Mediterranean” Disney Cruise for next year – ten grand before they step on the plane to Portugal – and they’re not batting an eye, and they’re your basic middle class people; they’re by no means rich. How are they planning it? By saving for it out of their “stagnant” wages and the fact that they were able to re-finance the house they purchased at 8% interest a few years ago to a new mortgage of just under 5%. Unemployment is a low 4.8%. Under a different president, that would – of course – be “full employment.”

Willism has graphs, he’s got charts, he’s got all sorts of information about the economy that no one is reporting or looking at. He demonstrates the literal chasm that exists between parties as to their perceptions about the economy. According to the left, we’re in the worst economy ever, much worse than the Carter economy, with double digit inflation and unemployment. We’re all out of work, we’re shoeless and homeless, we’re on bread lines. We’re selling apples on the streetcorner…and yet somehow, all of these poor people have computers and iPods and blackberries with which to complain about it, kvetch and organize “protests.”

He also has this observation:

Incidentally, the Pew Research Center blames President Clinton’s sub-30 satisfaction level on the economy. “The Clinton administration inherited that bad economy,” they claim.
How many times does this claim need to be refuted, anyway? As Clinton assumed office, the recession had ended many months before. It was this president, George W. Bush, that inherited a weak economy, not President Clinton in 1992. However, it was President Clinton, not this president, who received a boost in poll ratings from a booming economy.

Will President George W. Bush ever receive a poll rating boost that reflects the strength of the American economy today? There’s still nearly 3 years left in his term, so I wouldn’t rule anything out.

Rule it out. Unless SOMEONE in the press gets an attack of conscience and starts reporting fairly (unlikely) or SOMEONE in the Democrat party starts being honest (even more unlikely – they see what happened to Joe Lieberman for daring to try that…) everything about this president and his legacy will be as negative as possible. The history books will also be negative, because they’ll be written by people who will have these reams of news articles “proving” that Bush was “the worst and most incompetent president of all time.” History is being revised and set in archives with every deadline.

Sorry to sound negative, but…it’s true.

More on the lonely booming economy from this economist.

Meanwhile, Consumer Confidence Soars.