Shall go unsed. And if need be make a good crises to further socialst agendas.

Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Uhhh...................................DUH.

Shouldn’t the MSM be happy it finally got the recession it has been trying to talk the economy down into for 2 years anyway? Too bad it happened a little later than expected, just in time for their boy Barry to be prez. Now Barry O will be blamed for bad economic times rightly or wrongly.

Hope the MSM enjoys the decreased ad revenue a recession will bring, along with additional job losses and news outlet closings.

There will be no hiding the truth of the failed socialist FDR and his failed policies.

The sun will in the end rule the Earth. 

In a way this issue is like beating a dead horse.  The media has been talking down the economy for almost the entire length of Bush's eight-year term.  This negative talk did not just start with the capital market meltdown.  All positive news was tempered with some form of qualification and any negative news was trumpeted to the masses.  Let's remember, the media made up this concept of people dropping out of the work force under George W. Bush, so as to claim that the low unemployment numbers exhibited during most of his term were misleading.  We were sitting at what many economists would call full employment (< 5% unemployment rate) and the media was telling us it was bad news.  So, do we really expect the media to scold Obama for "talking down the economy," when they themselves have taken the lead in that regard for the past five or six years?

When Bush took over it was pre 911. Unemployment was low, we were not at war,. Stock market was good, economy was good, high homeownership, inflation was low.

Presently we are officially in a recession, worst job cuts in over 3 decades, 10.5 trillion national debt, record deficit, millions of jobs at stake in the auto industry, with millions more retirees of those same companies that do not know what will happen to their pensions and medical care

I'm not saying Clinton was solely responsible for a good economy or Bush for a bad one, I am saying this is an apples to oranges comparision.

He had my vote

The media is so welded to the McGovern-Mondale wing of the Democratic Party (the extreme left) that in their eyes, Democrats can do nothing wrong, unless, of course, they aren't leftist enough.

...how Bush did talk the economy down every single day of the 2000 campaign season, yet the present economy has been in recession for a full year and for the most part, until very recently, Bush was talking the economy up.

Hard not to notice that.

During the 2000 campaign season, Bush was like a prophet on the economy, but during his own presidency, not so much, eh?

Warner - thanks, much needed post.

I might add, that my personal sense was that President-elect Bush, and then President Bush, over those next many months, while openly talking about the economic mess we faced - was not spending a lot of effort blaming the Clinton years for the mess; rather he was about getting down to how to stave off a recession and to get the economy back on track.

And to expound on your mention, "that an economic downturn was well underway as he was taking office."

We were just past the middle of the CA energy crisis - the blackouts, the Enron peddled crisis - as it is called by the left.

The broad market had peaked in late 1997. The Dot.com bubble collapsed in March, 2000. Was down, what some 56% when Bush took his seat?

$8-10 Trillion of irrational exhuberance bubble mania greed would be lost in the collapse.

The CBO had been revising - downward  - for 8 straight quarters,  corporate profits - accelerating the trend all along. Profits from current production had peaked in 1997, and would continue to fall until late 2001.

New Jobless Claims had bottomed, and sharply reversed course in very early 2000.

Manufacturing Activity (PMI Composite Index) began a steep reversal, and a slide, begining in late 1999.

GDP flattened in late 2000.

Real industrial production, peaked in June, 2000, then collapsed.

Growth of Real Sales of Manufacturing and Trade stopped in mid 1999, then rolled over and dived in early 2000.

Capital spending (orders for nondefense capital goods - excluding arircraft) sharply reversed course in the early spring of 2000 - heading straight south for the next 18 months.

Holiday Retail Industry Sales Increases, which had climbed sharply from 3.1% in 1995 to 8.1% in 1997, fell to 2.4% for the 2000-2001 transistion.  

Core CPI, which had been dropping for 19 years suddenly began climbing in 1998-1990 - roughly from about 1.5% it would rise to 3.5%, where it would reside until about mid-2001 when it fell again.

Household debt burden, as a % of household income, had been on a vertical tear since Bill Clinton was elected  - setting the stage for one of the legs of the current credit crisis.

And to summarize the Clinton economy, I always go with the economic idol of the liberal left MSM, Dean Baker of CEPR, who said in March, 2001 looking back at the disaster Bush inherited:

"the nation's political leaders chose to ignore the stock market bubble" -- and "as a result, millions of families have seen their dreams of a secure retirement or their children's college education vanish."

Here's the question - did any member of the MSM ever directly ask a question of Bill Clinton about the economic pain he left behind ?

(;~/ gary