Economists for Bush

1. inherited a recession
2. had the unfortunate luck of being president at the time of a devastating attack on American soil shook the financial and airline industries
3. launched a global war on terrorism and the liberation of two countries
4. was in office when corporate scandals rocked corporate America

Simply put, this series of events should have sent the American economy reeling.

Economist J. Edward Carter is the chairman of Economists for Bush who puts together a pretty solid argument that in spite of everything, Bush's economic record is in many ways superior to Clinton's first three years:

Other items that Mr. Carter points out:

• The unemployment rate peaked in June 2003 at 6.3 percent, compared with peaks of 7.8 percent and 10.8 percent during the previous two recessions.
• For the third consecutive year, the U.S. economy is poised to grow faster than most other industrialized economies. France, Germany, and Japan, for instance, are not expected to grow even half as fast as the United States.
• Since the Bush administration began, non-farm productivity has increased at a 4.1 percent annual rate — the fastest pace for the start of any presidency since Harry S. Truman occupied the White House.
• More single-family homes were sold in 2003 than in any other year on record. And the homeownership rate is at a record-high of 68.5 percent — a full percentage point higher than during the fourth quarter of 2000.
• At 5.6 percent, the national unemployment rate is now lower than the average unemployment rate of the 1970s, 1980s, and the 1990s.
• According to the Labor Department's household survey — the survey used to calculate the monthly unemployment rate — more Americans are working now than ever before. The payroll survey is also showing improvement: 112,000 new jobs were created in January and 366,000 jobs have been added over the last five months.

Update:

• America's economy, bolstered by brisk business spending, grew at a healthy 4.1 per cent annual rate in the final quarter of 2003. That was even faster than first thought and offered new evidence that the economic recovery in the US was firmly rooted going into the new year.
• The economy's performance in the second half of last year marked the best back-to-back quarterly performance since the first two quarters of 1984

Update:

• France's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 9.6 pct in January from 9.7 pct in December, the Labour Ministry said.

Blog post #2442 in category Economics

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