Quoted from an AP story displayed on the AIM news ticker:
Now maybe its just me, and I really haven’t followed any of his economic moves to date, but doesn’t this seem like a rediculous cop-out? “Yeah we’re about to enter a recession, BLAME IT ON THE TALIBAN!” Everybody knew we were in for a downturn real soon, and he seems to be implying “everything would have been fine until this stuff came around”.
Fuck that. Don’t weasel out of what you willingly walked into.
Or, conversely, we could not assume that W is some sinister Dr. Evil, diverting our attention while he slowly bankrupts our country, which would benefit him by…
oh
um…
wait…it wouldn’t.
I, jarbaby have experienced financial craziness since 9/11. I cancelled an $800 trip, refunded airline tickets, changed my investments, squirreled money away. If everyone did this (and I’m sure more did than didn’t), then Mr. Bush is right, a frightened country at war isn’t going to go out throwing money around.
jar
What I find strange is that someone who hasn’t “followed any of his economic moves to date” would make such definitve statements on the subject. Also, the statement that “Everybody knew we were in for a downturn real soon” is complete nonsense. There was some disagreement among economists before the bombings as to whether the economy would go into recession, but afterwards the general concensus was that it had become unavoidable as a result of the bombings.
The stuff that you quote from Bush is pretty much conventional wisdom. You might want to read up about it.
I think part of the point is that Bush himself was announcing an impending recession…
The fact is that things were headed south for months, and even the Great Greenspan was predicting slower times ahead (as evidenced by his lowering interest rates).
What 9/11 did was to speed up the slow down, by encouraging people to stay home and stop spending on non-necesities. The only way to get back to normal spending is to get our society back to what it was before 9/11, and that will not be an easy task, so 9/11 did have an effect, but certainly not the only reason things are as they are.
Bush is, perhaps, not stating the case clearly, as he is prone to do (er, not to do? whatever).
… which some might argue we were already in!
I haven’t been able to understand economists of late, “This may trigger a recession” “We may experience a downturn”
Call me crazy, but haven’t we been “heading” into a recession for a year now. I remember months ago getting annoyed that economists kept saying we “might head for recession” when we seemed to have already been in one.
Geez, when the heck are we officially in one anyway? Or will we just never admit it?
It beats blaming it on the democrats, which is what they seemed to be doing before the eleventh.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with it. Hell, I don’t have a problem blaming everything on the Taliban… up to, and including, this damn corn I think I’m getting on my heel.
Those fuckers!!
Here’s a link to the actual AP article, for those interested.
Let’s also remember that recessions are not made overnight. Unemployment has been building for quite a while now. Internet companies were filing for bankruptcy faster than you could say “dot com”.
some economic talking heads say this 9/11 “turn of events” might make a recession last 2 quarters longer and maybe 2 points deeper. (I heard this the other morning on McLaughlin Group.)
What’s the official definition of recession? Two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth?
Well, the quarter ending 9/30 was such a quarter, they’ve just announced. (Link, fifth paragraph.) Odds are very good that the economy won’t grow this quarter, either. So once that’s definite, they’ll tell us we’ve been in a recession since July 1.
Damn tradesilicon, took the spot of my post. With almost exactly what I said too.
I haven’t followed the moves he’s made, that doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the state or direction of the economy.
As far as the “nonsense”, beyond the fact that I’d been hearing throughout the entire election season and following months that the economy was slowing down and the issue was how each candidate would deal with the recession, I’d say about 20% of the people I know who just graduated this past may or are graduating this year who had either already signed on with a company or were in the process of getting to an agreement have since been sent looking for other jobs.
And no they weren’t all working for dotcoms.
I believe your memory is deceiving you with regards to the election campaign. The idea that the economy would slow down significantly was not at all a given at the time, and was not a major campaign issue. Actually if anything the reverse is true - the candidates debated how we should deal with our prosperity - tax cuts or debt repayment etc.
I don’t think your freinds are a representative sample. but it is true that the economy did begin to slow down well before the WTC bombing. This does not imply that there was to be a significant downturn, i.e. a recession - I’ll bet as recently as 6 months ago most economists believed that the economy had bottomed out or would shortly, aided by Fed rate cuts etc.
There is widespread concensus among economists that there is likely to be a significant economic impact from the WTC bombing. This message emerged in the days after the bombing.
I’m surprised that you would deny any of this.
Sorry, wouldn’t have done it if I knew you were about to…
RTFirefly - I heard the same definition (years ago), but I was under the impression that this is the second consecutive quarter with negative growth (how the hell did they get that term?); I think I caught that on Bob Brinker last weekend. Therefore we are in a recession now.
And IzzyR - byyy the time th presidential campaign was nearing it’s end, the dot coms were going bust and the whole tech sector took a hit. Most of the damage to the economy in actual profit loss, job loss, stock price loss, etc. has been put on the books this year, but it was well under way last year. I remember the start of layoffs in Silican Valley at the end if last year. Granted, very few were predicting just how severe it would get, but it was under way.
I agree with this. The difference between a minor slowdown and the beginning of a major downturn is only apparent in retrospect.
Actually the 2nd quarter had a .3% growth, so it hasn’t been two consecutive quarters yet. The 3rd quarter was negative, and as RTFirely pointed out, the 4th quarter will likely be negative as well, but we won’t know for sure until the quarter is over and the results are announced sometime in late January.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
The numbers are revised, eventually. Many economists believe that revisions will ultimately show that the second quarter was negative as well. But to this point we are not yet considered to be in recession.