{"id":7683,"date":"2006-06-14T12:29:53","date_gmt":"2006-06-14T16:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7683"},"modified":"2006-06-14T12:29:53","modified_gmt":"2006-06-14T16:29:53","slug":"once-again-taking-stock-of-bushs-record-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/once-again-taking-stock-of-bushs-record-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Once again, taking &#8216;stock&#8217; of Bush&#8217;s record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From time to time, it&#8217;s helpful to look back and see how the administration performs by its own standards. In February 2004, for example, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was on CNN defending the Bush administration&#8217;s economic policies. When Judy Woodruff noted the president&#8217;s poor record on job creation, Chao suggested there&#8217;s only one number that matters.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Woodruff: I want to cite the one economic analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston. He said, these are his words, quote, &#8220;very disappointing; we&#8217;re not getting the jobs to replace the stimulus in the economy which will fade once the first quarter ends.&#8221; Another economist said, &#8220;It&#8217;s the weakest job-creation rate relative to economic growth on record.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Chao: Well, the [tag]stock market[\/tag] is, after all, the final arbiter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In retrospect, Chao may have wanted to pick a different standard of measurement, because if the stock market is &#8220;the final arbiter,&#8221; Bush has some explaining to do.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, the [tag]Dow Jones[\/tag] <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/06\/13\/AR2006061301761.html\">closed at 10,706.14<\/a>. On the day [tag]Bush[\/tag] was sworn into office in January 2001, the Dow Jones stood at 10,732.46.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, after five-and-a-half years of Bush&#8217;s presidency and a series of budget-busting tax cuts, the stock market has a cumulative gain of negative 26 points.<\/p>\n<p>Under [tag]Reagan[\/tag], the Dow went up 148%. Under [tag]Clinton[\/tag], it grew 187%. After five-and-a-half years, Bush isn&#8217;t quite breaking even.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, Republican administrations have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sims.berkeley.edu\/~hal\/people\/hal\/NYTimes\/2003-11-20.html\">consistently under-performed<\/a> Democratic administrations on stock market growth, but who would have guessed that nearly five years after Bush took office, the Dow wouldn&#8217;t have grown at all? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From time to time, it&#8217;s helpful to look back and see how the administration performs by its own standards. In February 2004, for example, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was on CNN defending the Bush administration&#8217;s economic policies. When Judy Woodruff noted the president&#8217;s poor record on job creation, Chao suggested there&#8217;s only one number that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}