Matthew Yglesias » Laugh of the Day

Dec 5th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

Laugh of the Day

Over at The Albany Project they’ve reached into the memory bank and found the Bush administration’s economic growth forecasts:

Oops! Here’s the original document released in early 2008, before the shit hit the fan but quite a while after folks had been warning that an awful lot of shit was flying around in the vicinity of the fans.

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Filed under: Bush Legacy, Economy,

28 Responses to “Laugh of the Day”

kafka Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
“My baseline outlook involves a period of sluggish growth, followed by a somewhat stronger pace of growth starting later this year as the effects of (Fed) and fiscal stimulus begin to be felt.”

-Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, USA Today, February 15, 2008

We got rid of Bush in the election, but Ben’s still around.
Richard Cownie Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Quick question: back around the end of Bush’s first term, I remember it was touch-and-go as to whether he would have achieved any positive net job growth over the 4 years
20Jan2001 – 20Jan2005. With employment dropping 500k+/month,
I’m wondering what’s the score for net job growth over Bush’s
whole 8 years ? Are we getting back to where we started ?
Exile on Ericsson St. Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Quick question: back around the end of Bush’s first term, I remember it was touch-and-go as to whether he would have achieved any positive net job growth over the 4 years
20Jan2001 – 20Jan2005. With employment dropping 500k+/month

Wiki lists him as having created 3.7 million in his second term but that’s before the downward revisions for 2008 and the loss of jobs in November (and presumably December and January).
Kolohe Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Yeah, predictions are hard, especially about the future. This is such a cheap ‘gotcha’; I’m sure a similar Clinton budget document from 98 or 99 would have shown a similar 2-3% growth for the next 7 years.
Exile on Ericsson St. Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Yeah, predictions are hard, especially about the future. This is such a cheap ‘gotcha’; I’m sure a similar Clinton budget document from 98 or 99 would have shown a similar 2-3% growth for the next 7 years.

Yup, just like “you’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie” jokes were cheap shots. Brownie was doing a heckuva job, it’s those damned levees that screwed up, right?
Kolohe Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I ain’t saying it’s not a bad call, just that everyone makes the same bad call; only a hack would say otherwise. Much like Barney Frank saying “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis”[1]

Here’s some good ones from Clinton’s that came out at the same time (relatively speaking Jan 2000) as Bush’s:

Page 74 of the conomic report of the president has a section titled: “The End of the Business Cycle?” followed by “An Expansion Is Only as Old as It Feels, and This One Still Feels Young” [2]. More to the point, the Jan 2000 prediction for real GDP growth (page 87) was
2000 2.9
2001 2.6
2002 2.5
2003 2.5
2004 3.0
2005 3.0
2006 2.9

and as we can see from the chart of the original post, the FY2000 growth exceeded estimates (thanks to the height of the bubble) while the FY 2001 growth was way short (and 9/11 affected fy 02 growth much more; the attack happened within 3 weeks of the end of the FY). So we have the same case of fecal material and rotating machinery.

[1]http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2(please note I am not saying that Freddie/Fannie caused the financial crisis – but at the same time they are not innocent bystanders. But having to get bailed out is pretty prima facie evidence that the companies *themselves* f***ed up and Frank’s prediction was wrong)
[2]http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy01/pdf/2000_erp.pdf
unless you want to believe that Bush single handedly caused the 2001 slowdown, in which case further linking is pointless
santamonicamr Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
The absurdity of this isn’t that their predictions are so far from reality. I mean, let’s say they had actually nailed it. Why on earth would an Administration predict a severe recession even if magically they knew it was coming? No, the joke here is the fake precision. Going from 2.7 to 3.0 then down to 2.9 then down to 2.8. Man, give me a break. If you have to do these dumb projections, make it absolutely clear that it’s a SWAG by drawing a straight line into the indefinite future: “2.8% growth” each year as far as the eye can see.
Ben C Says:
December 6th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Go back to 2001 and look at their budget projections. The debt was supposed to be gone by 2010…
Will Says:
December 6th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Everyone knew the economy sucked even at the beginning of 2008. Polls showed that most Americans expected a recession or believed we were already in one. (it turned out they were correct, in contrast to 2001 when no one recognized the recession until we were almost out of it). The economy then was of course much better than it is now, but at the time the pessimism seemed overwhelming. See http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/electionpoll/2008/pollresults.html (taken in January 2008 and scroll down to the economy questions.
JonF Says:
December 6th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Re: it turned out they were correct, in contrast to 2001 when no one recognized the recession until we were almost out of it

????
I recall reading lots of predictions of recession in late 2000 and early 2001. The 2001 recession was not a stealth event.
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Laugh of the Day

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