To Brad DeLong, for having a little fun at Greg Mankiw's expense. It seems that Mankiw claims that George W. Bush never blamed Bill Clinton for his economic troubles, which to begin with isn't true, but more to the point is a silly comparison, given that the economy in winter 2000-2001 was, shall we say, just a wee bit stronger than the economy in winter 2008-2009. I'm struggling to think of an analogy...it's sort of like if Nixon had blame JFK and LBJ every time there was a hiccup in the space program, or if Joe Girardi blamed Joe Torre for anything that went wrong with the Yankees, or if Yoko blamed Jane Asher from breaking up The Beatles.
Anyway, DeLong pulls out one quote to "gotcha" Mankiw directly, but I seem to recall that it's a standard talking point that Bush's economic record up until the end of 2007 or so was great, excepting the early-term recession that you can't blame him for because of what he inherited and the September 11 attacks. Which, you know was totally reasonable, or at least the part about Bush not being responsible for the 2001 recession (although it does undermine the talking point about magic tax cuts solving everything the moment they get introduced).
At any rate, I enjoyed it. Nice catch!
You're right about a talking point that the Bush tax cuts brought us 50 straight months of economic growth ... until the crash. Stock was a great buy in the 20's too, until it wasn't.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea how some of these talking points fly. It's just incredible.