The NYT is making up stories about the economy again. It told readers that "for years, he got no credit for a long-running economic recovery, in part because of popular anger over Iraq." What are they talking about. The economy was losing jobs from shortly after President Bush took office in January of 2001 until August of 2003. It then created jobs for just over four years and then began shedding jobs in January of 2008. How does this compares to an expansion that lasted for more than 8 years under Clinton? This period of job expansion was far weaker than the stretch of almost 8 years in the 80s also. In fact, it was a relatively short period of employment growth compared to other post-war expansions and it was also quite weak with the pace of job growth relatively modest over most of the period. So Bush had a short and relatively weak period of job growth. What exactly was he supposed to get credit for?
--Dean Baker
