Economics (General)
October 4, 2008--Unemployment's Really Bad
From Paul Krugman:
This chart shows U6, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (No data available before 1994.) You can still argue that presidents really don’t have that much influence on the economy. But remember, Bush supporters eagerly claimed that downward stretch from 2003 to 2006 — coinciding with the worst excesses of the housing bubble — as proof that tax cuts work. Live by the business cycle, die by the business cycle.
September 25, 2008--Home Prices
The following chart shows why home prices have a long way to go--down:
This shows the National Association of Realtors "median existing-home price (seasonally adjusted by Credit Suisse) to median family income." As explained in the WSJ: "The ratio maintained a relatively narrow range from 1981 to 2000, when it started to explode. Assuming that trends in prices and incomes remain constant, Credit Suisse forecasts that home price will return to the historical range some time late next year."
August 3, 2008--Growing Inequality in Income
The years of the Bush Administration have lead to extraordinary growth in income disparity. This is from the WSJ:
Read this: During the Bush Years, the bottom 90% of Americans, on an adjusted basis, saw their income fall by 4%. The 90-95 percentile saw real growth of only 2%. The 96-99 percentile saw real growth of only 1%. It was only those in the top 1% income group really had any significant growth. And, even within that group, the top half (that is, those in the top one-half of one percent of the population) really saw their income shoot up.
April 5, 2008--Job Growth
Yesterday, the economic news de jour was about the negative job numbers. Krugman has this chart on the comparable net jobs growth during the Clinton and the Bush II administrations:
How many days until January 20, 2009?
March 8, 2008--Real Interest Rates Go Negative
According to James Hamilton of Econobrowser, real interest rates on 2-year Treasury Notes has gone negative. Here's the chart:
February 9, 2008
The effort to reduce the use of tobacco is clearly working. See the chart at InfoPlease which shows that per capita consumption (based on those over the age of 18) of cigarettes has fallen from 2,092 in 2000 to 1,691 in 2006. That's a 19.16% decrease. In 2007, because the total number of cigarettes consumed has fallen, there will be a dramatic drop of at least another 3.22%. (This assumes no change in the over 18 population.)
January 28, 2008--Administrations Compared
This chart compares average annual economic growth during various presidential administrations:
The numbers are as follows:
Clinton -- 3.6%
Reagan -- 3.4%
Carter -- 3.4%
Nixon-Ford -- 2.7%
Bush II --2.6%
Bush I --1.9%
The numbers were drawn from the analysis of Dean Baker.
January 5, 2008--Job Numbers
From Paul Krugman's Blog, this chart showing the employment-population ratio — the percentage of adults with jobs — since the beginning of the Clinton administration:
January 26, 2008--The Falling Dollar
The CBO here has a collection of charts, one of which shows the disaster that has been George Bush:
In essence, we have all become poorer due to W.
October 28, 2007--What Goes Up, etc.
Here's why housing prices are going to fall rapidly:
The graph is from a report of the majority staff of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee entitled: The Subprime Lending Crisis: The Economic Impact on Wealth, Property Values and Tax Revenues, and How We Got Here. (Note: The JEC is not to be confused with the Joint Committee on Taxation. The JCT is, by design, non-partisan. The JEC is not. Thus, this JEC report is issued by the Majority Staff which is answerable to the Democratic majority on the JEC. Nevertheless, the information in the report is factual.)
This chart from the report presents the problem more simply:
October 6, 2007--Krugman Gets the Job Numbers Right
Paul Krugman on his blog gets it right with respect to the job numbers:
Over the whole of the Clinton administration, the economy added 22.7 million jobs – 237,000 per month.
Over the whole of the Bush administration to date, the economy added only 5.8 million jobs – 72,000 per month.
The Bushies like to pretend that history began in August 2003, so that they can ignore the job losses early in the administration. But even that doesn’t do the trick. Since August 2003, the economy has added 8.5 million jobs – 172,000 per month. So even by cherry-picking the good Bush years and pretending the bad years never happened, they still can’t match the average rate of job creation under Clinton.
Krugman gives a link to the BLS site here, but the specific site that allows you to make comparisons of non-farm payroll employment is here.
In a subsequent post, Krugman notes that:
There are suspicions that the revisions [in the employment numbers] will be even bigger [than the substantial downward revisions for the year ending March 2007] when they get around to the current period. One telltale sign: if you believe the BLS numbers, employment in residential home construction is down only 3.6% over the past year – and it’s still higher than its average level in 2005, the peak of the housing boom. This despite the fact that housing is in a very deep slump.
Update October 4, 2008--A year later, his comments seem almost quaint.