# How's the economy doing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 9, 2004, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293 "2004-05-09T15:25:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/41 "2004-05-10T03:50:23Z")
Found a place where I could cite to the FT article re Japan’s currency intervention: > [@](#): > > Japan’s finance ministry said it has stopped buying dollars to harness its strengthening currency, the Financial Times reports. > … > The move could also have unpleasant repercussions for U.S. Treasury bonds, which got a boost from all the currency buying by Japan and other Asian governments. Story, what little of it there is, here: [http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/1/2/55420121.html](http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/1/2/55420121.html) ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/42 "2004-05-10T03:53:36Z")
**Sam** , not that it’s surprising that you’d look around your favorite RW blogs for sources to back your predetermined conclusion that the recession is Clinton’s fault, or at least not Bush’s, but the [Office of Management and Budget](http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/1747/1/18/) for one disagrees with you pretty significantly. The official dates, ones you’ve quoted yourself before IIRC, are a start in March 2001 and an end in November 2001, still before the first Bush budget got out of the blocks. Yes, it was over _two and a half years ago_, officially, and this is certainly a new record for job growth lag. That is, if it’s real even now, and not just an artifact of military mobilization like last month’s “job growth” number. If you won’t blame Bush for starting the recession, you can’t credit him for ending it either, nor can you use 9/11 as an excuse. ---
**Author:** ![LuckySevens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@LuckySevens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LuckySevens)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/43 "2004-05-10T04:07:12Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > 5.6%, by the way, is one of the lowest unemployment rates of any country on the planet. Japan and Luxembourg are lower, I think, and that’s about it. Japan’s is lower because it has virtually zero immigration and a population that is not growing. Nitpick: Australia has a lower unemployment rate at the moment than 5.6% But they are also run by a conservative government who push forward tax cuts and job creation. See a pattern? I do. ---
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/44 "2004-05-10T04:13:17Z")
The US also had lower unemployment rates than the rest of the world during the Clinton years. Means nothing. ---
**Author:** ![LuckySevens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@LuckySevens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LuckySevens)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/45 "2004-05-10T04:39:53Z")
> [@pantom](#): > > The US also had lower unemployment rates than the rest of the world during the Clinton years. Means nothing. Clinton also struggled with inflation, usually attributed to low unemployment (it is said you cant have one without the other). Bush will probably have some inflation issues (or the dems) if he gets elected next term. But inflation thats managed a good thing, out of control inflation is a very very very bad thing though :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/46 "2004-05-10T05:33:32Z")
> [@](#): > > The US also had lower unemployment rates than the rest of the world during the Clinton years. Means nothing. Or you could say that Clinton did a pretty good job managing the economy. Which he did. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/47 "2004-05-10T05:39:25Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Also, the job creation in **2001** started from a base unemployment rate of what, 10.3% or something? (emphasis added) **Sam** , you’re right about everything in this thread, but you’re seriously buggin’ on the cites and the reading comprehension thing. Make you a deal – I’ll be more diligent than usual about following this thread during the week and in exchange, you get some productive sleep and some productive work done and pick up with your usual alacrity on, say, Wednesday. You’ll owe me one. Deal? > [@elvisl1ves](#): > > That is, if it’s real even now, and not just an artifact of military mobilization like last month’s “job growth” number. If you won’t blame Bush for starting the recession, you can’t credit him for ending it either, nor can you use 9/11 as an excuse. Anyone who doesn’t understand that 9/11 had a severe and (in terms of the U.S.) unprecedented negative effect on the economy should seriously be institutionalized for his own protection. Yes, seriously. As to the other points made recently, I’ll have much more tomorrow (I’ve had a couple beers tonight, and economics on alcohol is a poor idea), but yes, Japan (and to a much greater extent, China) has/have had a pallative effect on long-term rates – there are good macro reasons for them to have done so and in China’s case the trend is likely to continue, but there are risks associated with that – I’ll address those risks and why we’re in that place to begin with. I’ll also address the shape of the yield curve relative to China and Japan, Fed jawboning, inflation expectations, supply of government debt and other factors. Job growth has been slow, but compared to the relatively small job _losses_ during the recession they haven’t been too bad, particularly if one is a disciple of Alan Greenspan. The eight-month length of the measured recession was, candidly, way too short for the length of the expansion and the size of the bubble which preceded it. I’ll go into some of the possible reasons why. The measured duration of the recession has indeed been short, but the economy, particularly in terms of job creation, was (and is) weaker than the “recession” numbers indicate precisely because of 9/11 and some of the structural changes to the economy which occurred as a result. If anyone cares, I’ll even go into U.S. growth relative to European and LDC-country growth and how the expectations of the interplays among them have so far been both confounded and confirmed. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/48 "2004-05-10T06:40:40Z")
Agh. I meant 1991. Not 2001. We were comparing job creation after the last cycle with this one. You’re right, I need sleep. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/49 "2004-05-10T06:54:03Z")
I think it’s a sign of how desperate the Bush apologists are when they’re making all this hay about 288,000 jobs in April – while conveniently ignoring the _three years worth_ of job losses that preceeded it. “Hey, the economy is starting to suck less! Vote Bush!” ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/50 "2004-05-10T08:20:31Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > **Pantom** First, the recession started in the third quarter of 2000, before Bush took office. Sigh, there you go again Sam. You’ve repeated this incorrect information in other threads and have been corrected before on it. Why do you keep posting it? Doing so won’t make it true. See: [http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/04\_08/b3871044.htm?mz](http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/04_08/b3871044.htm?mz) > [@Sam Stone](#): > > [Geez, over 600,000 new jobs in two months is a ‘mere whiff’? Tough crowd. Again, this has been covered before in threads that you have been part of. The March job increase was mostly PART-TIME jobs. I haven’t yet seen a comprehensive analysis of the April numbers yet but would be surprised if at least 50% of the newly created jobs weren’t also PART-TIME work. Remember, the BLS counts ANY employment over 1 hour by anyone over 16 as employed. But part-time, low wage and benefit jobs do not help the economy to the same degree that a full-time, decent benefit job does. You may want to take a look at this [LINK](http://www.contraryinvestor.com/mo.htm) (May 2004 report) for a picture of the true state of the economy. One related quote form the Payroll Employment section of the report: > [@](#): > > If we had already lived through just average 3.03% payroll employment growth relative to the prior pre-recessionary peak in today’s environment, we’d have 5.97 million more jobs than we now experience in the current economy. I live in the Silicon Valley area. While there are more jobs being listed than in the past few months, many of these, at least in the technology area, are short-term contracts or selling services, like advertising or training courses. I don’t see many new pure technology jobs these days (in fact when I looked in the local paper under Programmers a couple weeks ago, there weren’t even any jobs in this area, in contrast to before the recession, when there were at least 2 full newspaper pages of jobs in this area! Lastly, with gas prices hitting new highs seemingly on a daily basis, the little people view doesn’t look that good. If you read the busyness news, you’ll notice that sales of full-size SUV’s were off significantly last month. People vote their pocketbooks and experiences, not esoteric statistics which have been manipulated to look positive. Unless Saudi Arabia succeeds in delivering on their promise to reduce gas prices before the election, this is going to be one of the issues that the low and middle class will be voting on. ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/51 "2004-05-10T09:35:51Z")
Found this short comment on the April job report at [http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm](http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm) > [@](#): > > **Decoupling from Reality** > > The report on jobs came out on schedule this morning, but while it showed healthy job growth on paper, the administration has a couple of problems with the report. First, even with the gains, Bushco is still down 1.5 million jobs during their term by their own numbers, and by our reckoning, at least twice that in real life. The spin sounds good (and example at [http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/040507/economy\_3.html](http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/040507/economy_3.html) ) but the harsh reality shows up when you really tear into the numbers. For one thing, the number of severely under-utilized people has dropped to 9.3% in table U-6 (Alternative measures of unemployment) but again, it depends who’s doing the measuring. The number of people falling off the rolls has continued unabated. so as benefits run out, people are not counted. > > Now let me point out a few glitches in today’s data: > > - The labor participation rate actually got worse. Down to 65.7% of the workforce from 65.8 last month. Don’t ask me to explain how the participation rate can go down when jobs is up - and the workforce is essentially flat - because I can’t justify the penciling at BLS anymore than I can explain Biblical miracles. > > - About half a million more people (~475,000) disappeared as not in the labor force. > > - It’s still a “shop-keeper economy” with few goods producing jobs. The services sector was up 409,000 jobs compared with a year ago. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/52 "2004-05-10T11:34:41Z")
**SS:** \*This one is also unfalsifiable, because A) a President really doesn’t have all THAT much power when it comes to shaping an economy, at least in the short-term, and B) The workings of the economy are complex enough that it’s tough to assign cause and effect to things like tax policy. \* I agree, but you need to tell it to the White House. The Administration itself made some very optimistic and definite claims about the positive effects its tax cuts were going to have on job growth. It’s perfectly reasonable to call them on the discrepancies between their prediction and the actual [performance](http://www.jobwatch.org/): > [@](#): > > The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which was passed in May 2003 and took effect in July 2003, its “Jobs and Growth Plan.” The president’s economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers (see background documents), projected that the plan would result in the creation of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004—306,000 new jobs each month, starting in July 2003. The CEA projected that the tax cut itself would create 78,000 jobs a month in addition to the 228,000 jobs a month the economy would generate without a tax cut. After eight months of falling considerably short of that projection, job gains for the last two months have averaged above that level. For the 10 months as a whole, however, the administration projected that a total of 3,060,000 jobs would be created after the tax cuts took effect. In reality, only 1,043,000 jobs were created over the last 10 months, far less than the 2.28 million jobs that were predicted would occur without the tax cut. In other words, the **Administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers** predicted that the tax cuts would do far, far more for job growth than they actually have. According to the CEA predictions, we’d be doing more than twice as well by now if we hadn’t had the tax cuts at all! That’s not partisan sniping on the order of “no matter how well we’re doing, it’s Bush’s fault that we’re not doing better”. That’s a completely justifiable observation that the Administration’s “Jobs and Growth Plan” predictions were full of crap and haven’t come anywhere near being fulfilled—nor will they by the end of 2004, unless we get about 4.5 million new jobs by then. Now, the current uptick in the jobs numbers is indeed heartening, and we all hope it continues, but it still falls far short of what the Administration said their policies would accomplish. And they deserve to be called on that. _Now there are signs of wage inflation due to rapid job creation, increases in material costs, energy costs are skyrocketing, etc._ There are? According to the linked report, although there are indeed indications of inflation in rising **prices** , we are still seeing decline in the growth of **wages** : > [@](#): > > In the last two quarters, however, average hourly earnings have risen at only a 1.4% rate, and the wages and salaries in the ECI have slowed to a 2.2% pace. Never in the history of these two data series has either measure seen slower growth rates over a two-quarter period. > > Making matters worse, inflation has recently accelerated even as wage and salary income has continued to decelerate. The consumer price index has sped up to a 2.1% rate over the last two quarters, accelerating from the 1.5% rate for the two quarters before that. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/53 "2004-05-10T14:23:11Z")
Down here on the mean streets, I have four family members who are unemployed, three were laid off and one has been searching for work for over a year. Gas prices are at record highs and the country is stacking up debt. Everything is peachy! Sorry I don’t have any statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/57b2e6/32.png) [@Alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/54 "2004-05-10T14:53:22Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > In any event, whether it was the first two quarters of 2001 or the last quarter of 2000 is really irrelevant. Bush had yet to implement any economic policies, so you can’t lay the blame for the recession at his feet. The recession was a natural correction to a bubble economy. After the tech bubble and internet bubble collapsed, economic activity slowed, inventory levels rose, etc. I agreed with that. Obviously the economy goes sour well before a recession is officially called. I do hope the american economy improving, it greatly affects the rest of the world. But I’m not convinced that the latest figures are anything more than corrections in the market. Longterm, I’m mostly worried about the huge federal budget deficit and the trade deficit Shortterm, I’m worried about recent news about higher oil prices, as well as news that Japan doesn’t buy as much dollar as they used to. Greenspan has indicated that the interest rate is probably going up later this year. But what worries me most is that one on hand this “economic downturn” hasn’t been much of a downturn at all - compared to the late eighties and seventhies -; on the other hand, never before has so much money been pumped into the market as with Bush’s tax cuts. Yet, the improvement in the economy has been modest at best, even when the impact of September 11 is factored in. Will the economy manage to take off before the effects of the deficit cathes up with it? Hard to say, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2004, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/55 "2004-05-10T19:29:38Z")
Let’s just remember that, under [eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration,](http://clinton4.nara.gov/textonly/WH/New/html/20000204_13.html) there were **20.8 million** new jobs created. Even if the Bush Administration reports an average of 250,000 new jobs created every month between now and November, the sum total for four years of Bush-Cheney won’t even be a _quarter_ of that figure. And that’s _before_ looking at other factors, such as average salaries, full- or part-time jobs, distorted reporting by the Administration, etc. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/56 "2004-05-11T00:28:35Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I agree, but you need to tell it to the White House. The Administration itself made some very optimistic and definite claims about the positive effects its tax cuts were going to have on job growth. It’s perfectly reasonable to call them on the discrepancies between their prediction and the actual [performance](http://www.jobwatch.org/): > In other words, the **Administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers** predicted that the tax cuts would do far, far more for job growth than they actually have. According to the CEA predictions, we’d be doing more than twice as well by now if we hadn’t had the tax cuts at all! I’m thinking you should have some of the warm milk prescribed for **Sam**. Among the most glaring (and I’ll be _extremely_ charitable to jobwatch) errors in that report is that it referrs to a CEA paper on the President’s _proposed_ economic plan, not the one which was enacted. The enacted plan was half the size of the proposal, and had a notable difference in the treatment of dividends paid from retained earnings – 15% instead of 0. Additionally, the jobwatch people, uh, failed to remember some of the important qualifying parts of the release – particularly, the risk of “high required rates of return arising from geopolitical and other risks, and a prolonged period of balance-sheet repair,” both of which happened in spades during 2H03 – balance sheet repair happening mostly with large businesses and high required rates with smaller ones, the traditional engine of new jobs in the American economy. That said, the CEA report isn’t without its own faults. The main one is the one that pretty much everyone has made – that the economy could grow at the rate it did for as long as it did without new jobs. Essentially, everyone underestimated the amount of productivity which could be wrung out of the system by businesses scared to hire. I’ll leave CEA’s claim that GDP would be _increased_ by the plan to the politicians to argue, but the fact is that GDP growth was very good in 2H03. Heck, even prior to the later stimulus plan, and ignoring whether _any_ stimulus plan, tax or spending driven, had this or that effect, if someone told me at the beginning of 2002 that the economy would grow at 8.5+ percent in nominal terms and 5+% in real terms over the following two years and that the job market response would be bupkes, I’d have said that he’s nuts. Heck, even with the good job numbers in March, the first quarter _still_ saw productivity up 4.5 percent overall and up 5.9% in durable goods manufacturing, that home of the “good-paying” jobs (but see below). As for wages, the news has been mostly bad for the recovery through 2003 but turned decidedly positive in 2004 – I forgot to bring the precise stats with me, so I’ll have to get them later. Finally, the pay division between service jobs and manufacturing jobs just doesn’t exist. Sure, an autoworker makes more than a burger flipper. But _broadly_, during April the average manufacturing job paid $15.24/hour, $16.08 after overtime. Service jobs as a group paid $15.17. Service jobs ex-retail and leisure (where the burger-flippers and clerks are) paid $17.25/hr. During the past several months, more than half the jobs created have been in those categories of service jobs which pay better than the median. There do continue to exist important (but shrinking) differences between the two categories in terms of pension plans and some other things, but sadly, those differences don’t seem to drive people’s near-term economic decisions and are fodder for an entirely different thread. ---
**Author:** ![MMI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/53a042/32.png) [@MMI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MMI)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/57 "2004-05-11T01:02:20Z")
Job creation over the last few months has, as noted by many, been excellent. However, by the Bush Administrations projections we are doing abominably horrid on job creation. Incomprehensibly, mind bogglingly horrid. Late 2001 (post 9/11) the Administration projected that at the end of this year (Bush’s first term) we would have approximately 5.5-6 million jobs over the employment levels at the beginning of his administration, due to his tax cuts. Throughout 2002 employment fell. Late 2002/beginning 2003 the administration projected that at the end of this year employment would be up approximately 3 million from the levels at the beginning of 2001, due to Bush’s tax cuts. Throughout 2003 employment fell. Late 2003/beginning 2004 the administration projected that employment would be somewhat over that at the beginning of the Bush administration. Within a month they had repudiated the report as meaningless, replacing it with projections of 400,000 jobs generated a month. [http://www.jobwatch.org/](http://www.jobwatch.org/) > **[Missing the moving target](https://www.epi.org/publication/issuebriefs_ib197/)** > > Read a follow-up to this release,  White House backs off CEA prediction of “average” job growth (February 18, 2004) Missing the moving target Meager job growth and the poor track record of the administration’s job forecasts by Jared Bernstein,... [http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000146.html](http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000146.html) A case can certainly be made that the economy is recovering (IIRC a couple of indices are less than thrilling, but I’m happy with any good economic news at this point). To claim that the recovery (and not the extended recession) is due to Bush’s tax cuts requires that the Bush administration be mendacious, incompetent, or both. Lets hope the recovery continues. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/58 "2004-05-11T01:31:12Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Let’s just remember that, under [eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration,](http://clinton4.nara.gov/textonly/WH/New/html/20000204_13.html)… Blah blah blah. :rolleyes: Let us also remember that it was a [fucking bubble.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com) . Not a sustainable economic expansion. Based on a house of cards. A falsehood. Why is not suprising that you would pine for the days of a phoney expansion? ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/59 "2004-05-11T01:41:02Z")
Pssst… That was just the dot.coms… A very small part of the economy. Do you really think all the jobs were created in the dot.coms? Wanna buy a bridge? ---
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2004, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293/60 "2004-05-11T02:07:42Z")
A Cisco bridge? (sorry, couldn’t resist.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hows-the-economy-doing/244293.md?page=4)