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Trivia Question

Arkady

Arkady

President
Question: Since 1950, how many recessions have started under Democratic presidents? How many under Republican presidents?

Answer: 1 and 9.

3 under Eisenhower
2 under Nixon
1 under Carter
1 under Reagan
1 under GHW Bush
2 under GW Bush

Other interesting trivia:

The shortest recession in American history (just six months) happened on Carter's watch. It was intentionally caused by the Fed, which severely hiked interest rates in order to fight the inflation problem that had been dogging the nation since the Nixon years.

The longest recession of the 20th century (43 months) started during the third of three consecutive Republican presidencies.

The three longest recessions since WWII started under GW Bush, Reagan, and Nixon.
 
So, history shows that Republicans can't be trusted to run the country, and that their economic polices wreck the economy?

Whodathunkit?
 
What was the make up of both houses under those. Take the presidents out of the equation and insert the make up of both houses of congress and let's see what we get.
 
This'll probably sound pretty damn simple but then, I'M pretty damn simple!

But...IF we were to produce a series of charts indexing virtually ANY positive economic measure we can think of between 1950 and 2012, and we painted all the Dem Administration's lines blue and all the GOP Administration's lines red, it's not just that the "slight" advantage would go to the blue lines, it's that the stark and overwhelming advantage would go to the blue ones.

This begs the huge-assed question as to why in the hell "the people" still don't seem to realize this reality? I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's the Democrat's fault, for a coupla reasons. One, is that we Democrats just can't bring ourselves to admit that economic positivity is good, in and of itself. We much prefer to feel that whatever positivity results, is merely a by-product of our efforts to be "nice" and "fair".

And the second...is that we Democrats see ourselves as the advocates for the downtrodden. The downtrodden are an essential part of our base. Now truth be told, no matter how well our economy performs - by definition, there will ALWAYS be people living at the margin. But, we're scared shitless of "offending" the people at the margin, by pointing out our positive economic vectors. For if we were to do so, they would "accuse" the Democrats of being "in cahoots with the Republicans and corporatists", and not really caring about their plight.
 
Arkady said:
Question: Since 1950, how many recessions have started under Democratic presidents? How many under Republican presidents?

Answer: 1 and 9.

3 under Eisenhower
2 under Nixon
1 under Carter
1 under Reagan
1 under GHW Bush
2 under GW Bush

Other interesting trivia:

The shortest recession in American history (just six months) happened on Carter's watch. It was intentionally caused by the Fed, which severely hiked interest rates in order to fight the inflation problem that had been dogging the nation since the Nixon years.

The longest recession of the 20th century (43 months) started during the third of three consecutive Republican presidencies.

The three longest recessions since WWII started under GW Bush, Reagan, and Nixon.
Click to expand...

Skewed statistic. Since 1950 there have been a lot more Republican presidents than Democrat ones. The only Democrats elected to the White House since 1950 are Truman, Kennedy (one term), Johnson (one term) and Carter (one term) and Clinton. In the same period the U.S. has had Eisenhower (two terms), Nixon (one term, plus), Ford (one-term, minus), Reagan (two terms), George H.W. Bush (one term), and George W. Bush (two terms). Republicans, having had more time in the White House have had a higher likelihood of having an economic downturn while in the White House.

You can flip this statistic, too. For 40 years, from 1952 to 1992, the Congress was controlled by the Democratic Party. Most of those downturns during Republican presidencies (and during Democrat presidencies, for that matter) came while Democrats controlled the federal purse strings.
 
Mr. Arkady,

a couple of corrections. The First Recession under Eisenhower, the Recession during the Reagan Administration, and the 2001 recession, while they officially began during the republican presidency, actually started during the previous Democrat's tenure, and were entirely part of the previous Democratic president's economic policies. That means, instead of the inflated 9-1 statistic, it is actaully 6-4.

See, a recession is defined as beginning after two quarters of negative GDP growth, and/or 1.5% decrease in the unemployment rate, and since the three recessions I cited begin within the first six months of the new president being in office, the fault of the recession lies offically on the doorstep of the previous president.

No, no need to thank me. I just saw that you were coming off as a dishonest debator, and I know that's not true of my good friend and I wanted to correct the preception.
 
ya-ta-hey said:
Mr. Arkady,

a couple of corrections. The First Recession under Eisenhower, the Recession during the Reagan Administration, and the 2001 recession, while they officially began during the republican presidency, actually started during the previous Democrat's tenure, and were entirely part of the previous Democratic president's economic policies. That means, instead of the inflated 9-1 statistic, it is actaully 6-4.

See, a recession is defined as beginning after two quarters of negative GDP growth, and/or 1.5% decrease in the unemployment rate, and since the three recessions I cited begin within the first six months of the new president being in office, the fault of the recession lies offically on the doorstep of the previous president.

No, no need to thank me. I just saw that you were coming off as a dishonest debator, and I know that's not true of my good friend and I wanted to correct the preception.
Click to expand...


Going by that then, YOU must agree that the Obama economic woe's lie squarely on Bush's shoulders eh......


Thought so, glad you can admit it.
 
Citizen said:
Going by that then, YOU must agree that the Obama economic woe's lie squarely on Bush's shoulders eh......


Thought so, glad you can admit it.
Click to expand...

Yeah...a rote "go to" diversion for the GOPlickers around this subject, tends to be to "revise the rules". The problem is....when we apply those revised rules across the board, it tends to make the GOP's case worse, rather than better.
 
Mr. Citizen,

You forget I'm a truthful conservatives, so you can't put words in my mouth like you can your liberal friends. I agree the current recession started under Bush, but the fact that it took three years to get out is entire the fault of Obobo the clown.

You should try honest debate sometimes, it's very freeing.
 
Here's a little story from my own life. I was once hired for a summer job that involved sending out thousands of letters on behalf of an organization. The organization wasn't terribly technically sophisticated and they thought it would take me all summer. But I realized on day one that the vast majority of the work could be automated with a few macros and a mail merge, turning it into two weeks of work (with much better accuracy than doing it the slow way). At the end of two weeks, they were overjoyed and gave me a decent bonus -- and then I was out of work. The next job I found didn't pay nearly as much, so even after the bonus I would have been much better off not to have come up with my bright idea.

Anyway, I mention that because the Democrats have a similar problem. They succeed their way out of the job. The better the Democrats do, the more rich people there are and the fewer poor people. When there are more rich people, the Republican message of tax cuts sounds more appealing. When there are fewer poor people, the need for a strong government is obvious to fewer people -- and the Republican rhetoric labeling the poor lazy has more resonance, since there are more formerly-poor people who worked their way out of it, and are suspicious of those who haven't managed to do the same. Thus, the more Democrats succeed, the harder it gets for them to hold onto the office.

You can really see it in 2000. The prior eight years had been SPECTACULAR economically. Poverty had dropped like a rock, median incomes were way up, people were sitting on fat investment portfolios, etc. So, when Bush told us he wanted to cut taxes, and he insisted he could do it without causing deficits, we, as a nation, thought that sounded great. When he told us he'd get government out of our hair, that sounded great, too, since few of us were relying on it, and the business world was looking brilliant after eight great years. So, Clinton basically succeeded the Democrats right out of a job.
 
No. Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Bush. Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama. 6 to 5. There simply weren't a lot more Republican presidents than Democratic ones. Where'd you get that idea, anyway?

As for total time in office, you've got about 26.5 years of Dems versus 35.5 of Republicans. If recessions were equally likely to happen any given year, we'd expect a ratio of around 1.3 to 1, rather than 9 to 1. You can't explain it away with somewhat greater Republican occupation of the White House.

Now, if you think there's equally strong skewing of the stats in favor of recessions starting with Democratic control of Congress, let's see the numbers. But first research them, since right off the bat you left out Republican control of the Senate for part of Reagan's presidency. I think what you'll find is that the recession distribution, between Republican and Democratic Congresses, is about what we'd expect based on the distribution of those parties being in control, rather than tilting one way or the other.
 
If you start a post with "a couple corrections," then it should include a couple corrections. Otherwise you look weird. I referenced the number of recessions starting under each type of president. If you want to say "true, however..." and then try to argue why we shouldn't count recessions that started in someone's first year, feel free to do so. But it's not a correction, it's a redirection. My information was entirely correct and required no correcting.

On the substantive point, I'm open to the idea of shifting blame for the first economic year of a president's term in office to his predecessor. But, if we do so, be aware that Obama ends up looking awfully good, since nearly everything bad that happened on his watch, economically, happened in that first year. If we shift 2009 into Bush's column, then the unemployment rate has dropped almost two points on Obama's watch. Is that where you'd like to go?

As for the idea that a recession is defined as beginning after two quarters of negative GDP growth, that's a layman's definition. I'm using the NBER business cycle dating conventions. If you want to use a less sophisticated analysis, feel free, but then we'll need to recalculate entirely, since some of those recessions may not even count as recessions under the quarters analysis... for example, the first of GW Bush's two recessions involved a quarter of shrinkage, a quarter of growth, and a quarter of shrinkage, as did the 1960 recession.

Now, you don't need to thank me either. I just saw you coming across as juvenile, and I wanted to try to bring you up to speed.
 
Please re-read what I wrote. If you don't understand it still, I can help you out. Hint: I referred to how many recessions started under each president. None started under Clinton. And if you want to say Clinton claims responsibility for that recession, then cite him doing so, or you just look like a tool. Now, if you want a NON-PARTISAN take on the question, check out the NBER, which is the outfit that provides the business cycle dates (they're the ones that decide when, exactly, recessions start and end).

http://www.nber.org/cycles/november2001/

If you read that, what you'll see is that, OVERALL, the economy didn't even reach a peak until March 2001, and that the shrinkage after that was such that it may have been possible to avoid recession as late as September 2001:

"Q: The NBER has dated the beginning of the recession in March 2001. Does this mean that the attacks of September 11 did not have a role in causing the recession?

A. No. Before the attacks, it is possible that the decline in the economy would have been too mild to qualify as a recession. The attacks clearly deepened the contraction and may have been an important factor in turning the episode into a recession."

One might still argue that there was nothing Bush could have hoped to do in his first nine months that would have made a difference.... you could argue that although he inherited a growing economy, it was already running out of gas and the shrinkage was bound to happen no matter what, and was bound to be significant and protracted enough to count as a recession, even if we'd had good leadership. I'm entirely open to that possibility. But it is just an assumption. It's also possible that if he'd been a good leader (for example, spending August unraveling the 9/11 attacks instead of vacationing for the whole month at his mansion), we wouldn't have had a recession. Tough to say.
 
Arkady said:
Here's a little story from my own life. I was once hired for a summer job that involved sending out thousands of letters on behalf of an organization. The organization wasn't terribly technically sophisticated and they thought it would take me all summer. But I realized on day one that the vast majority of the work could be automated with a few macros and a mail merge, turning it into two weeks of work (with much better accuracy than doing it the slow way). At the end of two weeks, they were overjoyed and gave me a decent bonus -- and then I was out of work. The next job I found didn't pay nearly as much, so even after the bonus I would have been much better off not to have come up with my bright idea.

Anyway, I mention that because the Democrats have a similar problem. They succeed their way out of the job. The better the Democrats do, the more rich people there are and the fewer poor people. When there are more rich people, the Republican message of tax cuts sounds more appealing. When there are fewer poor people, the need for a strong government is obvious to fewer people -- and the Republican rhetoric labeling the poor lazy has more resonance, since there are more formerly-poor people who worked their way out of it, and are suspicious of those who haven't managed to do the same. Thus, the more Democrats succeed, the harder it gets for them to hold onto the office.

You can really see it in 2000. The prior eight years had been SPECTACULAR economically. Poverty had dropped like a rock, median incomes were way up, people were sitting on fat investment portfolios, etc. So, when Bush told us he wanted to cut taxes, and he insisted he could do it without causing deficits, we, as a nation, thought that sounded great. When he told us he'd get government out of our hair, that sounded great, too, since few of us were relying on it, and the business world was looking brilliant after eight great years. So, Clinton basically succeeded the Democrats right out of a job.
Click to expand...

Now that you mention it...yes! VP Gore essentially suggested that it wasn't quite time to count our chickens, that we should be prudent, and that we needed to continue building on our foundation. Li'l George on the other hand, didn't just say that we could afford a huge taxcut, he said we could have it all. He said that by "suffering" ourselves a taxcut, we would actually produce BETTER results than if we DIDN'T accept a taxcut!

I don't see that angle working in '12. But...IF the next four years produce the sorts of positive results I'm expecting, we should be wary of its returning for '16. Funny thing is - as I've babbled before, it could actually be the Teabaggers with their debt/deficit obsession, that actually kill the GOP establishment's golden goose.
 
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