For years, Democrats and their media minions have maintained that the economic boom of the '90s was caused by the fiscal policies of President Bill Clinton, in particular his 1993 income tax hike.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman shockingly said what conservatives have been claiming all along (video follows with transcript and commentary):
PAUL KRUGMAN: I think the model is something like Clinton who, in fact, mostly was just riding on a successful economy that was successful mostly for reasons that had nothing much to do with him. But he was able to, to be a very popular president by presiding over that, by providing competent management on those things you could control. I think that is Obama’s model now. It’s, I’m not sure it will be enough cause this, we’re in much deeper economic than we were in the ’90s, but given the realistic political limits, you can’t expect him to do too much.
Indeed.
As conservatives like myself have been saying for years, despite what the Democratic presidential candidate and his media minions were saying at the time, the early '90s recession ended in the first quarter of 1991 long before most of the nation had ever heard of Bill Clinton.
Counter to the totally incorrect conventional wisdom fostered by dishonest media members across the fruited plain, the Gross Domestic Product grew by 2.7 percent in the second quarter of 1991 followed by 1.7 percent in the third quarter and 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter.
As such, before the first primary in New Hampshire, the economy was already growing.
But that was just the beginning, for the economy was actually starting to boom before Election Day, as the GDP grew by 4.5 percent in the first quarter of 1992, 4.3 percent in the second quarter, 4.2 percent in the third quarter, and 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter.
What this means is the economy had been growing for seven straight quarters by the time Clinton took office, with the previous four quarters experiencing what most economists consider boom-like in terms of GDP.
Now throw in Intel expanding computer chips to a 586 platform, as well as a little invention called the router which allowed us mere mortals to log onto the Internet, and the resulting technological boom provided economic stimulus like nothing most Americans alive at the time had ever witnessed.
Add it all up, and Mr. Krugman was 100 percent right for a change.
Someone pass the smelling salts.
