You recognized that the dot com bubble burst under Clinton's watch in early 2000 which was promptly sending the economy into the tank. Yet you try to claim Bush was handed an extremely strong economy. The economy had begun to slide long before Bush won the 2000 elections, tax revenues had already begun to decline, and growth had already disappeared.
How strong or weak was the economy that Bush inherited from Clinton? Check out the
link that Alcyone posted here earlier. Scroll down a bit and you will find a graph showing how the American economy has been doing on average during the last forty years, in terms of federal outlays, revenues and deficit, between 1968 and 2008, as percentage of GDP. You can see from this graph that the American economy was really exceptionally strong during the Clinton years, far stronger than during any other part of this forty-year period. By contrast, America was really very much running a deficit during the Reagan years. As for the deficit/surplus graph, Clinton inherited a bad deficit, but during his term the deficit was eliminated and turned into a strong surplus. Take a look at the graph. It shoots upward like an arrow almost all throughout the Clinton years. Doesn't it show how magnificently strong the American economy was when Clinton was President?
And look at what George W. Bush did to the economy. No, he didn't leave it in the worst shape it has been during the last forty years,
if the estimated figures for 2008 turn out to be correct. And that is a big "if" indeed. Chances are that the economic situation will be a lot worse than what was predicted when this graph was made. But in any case, no President has done so much damage to the economy during the last forty years as George W. Bush, if we think of how strong the economy was when he took office and how much it deteriorated in terms of deficit during his Presidency. Again I'm reading this from the graph.
So think again, Roger. Yes, the dot com bubble started during the Clinton years. It was, all things considered, a somewhat bad bubble, but not a historically bad one. It wasn't in any way comparable to the housing and banking bubble we are seeing now.
Or if you think it was, Roger, why don't you find statsistics proving that it was?
Ann
