It's the Dishonesty .....

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
It's the Dishonesty .....
9
Fri, 09-10-2004 - 6:01am

 


Many of us have been saying it all along.  The president is not telling the truth about the economic state of the union.  As I said at the start of the last election - If Bush is elected hold on to your wallets.   I for one will be watching and listening for the false annoucement described in this op-ed piece.


 


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/opinion/10krugman.html


<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />September 10, 2004


OP-ED COLUMNIST


The Dishonesty Thing

By PAUL KRUGMAN







 


It's the dishonesty, stupid. The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't.


It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted.


It wasn't always that way. Three years ago, those of us who accused the administration of cooking the budget books were ourselves accused, by moderates as well as by Bush loyalists, of being "shrill." These days the coalition of the shrill has widened to include almost every independent budget expert.


For example, back in February the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities accused the Bush administration of, in effect, playing three-card monte with budget forecasts. It pointed out that the administration's deficit forecast was far above those of independent analysts, and suggested that this exaggeration was deliberate.


"Overstating the 2004 deficit," the center wrote, "could allow the president to announce significant 'progress' on the deficit in late October - shortly before Election Day - when the Treasury Department announces the final figures."


Was this a wild accusation from a liberal think tank? No, it's conventional wisdom among experts. Two months ago Stanley Collender, a respected nonpartisan analyst, warned: "At some point over the next few weeks, the Office of Management and Budget will release the administration's midsession budget review and try to convince everyone the federal deficit is falling. Don't believe them."


He went on to echo the center's analysis. The administration's standard procedure, he said, is to initially issue an unrealistically high deficit forecast, which is "politically motivated or just plain bad." Then, when the actual number comes in below the forecast, officials declare that the deficit is falling, even though it's higher than the previous year's deficit.


Goldman Sachs says the same. Last month one of its analysts wrote that "the Office of Management and Budget has perfected the art of underpromising and overperforming in terms of its near-term budget deficit forecasts. This creates the impression that the deficit is narrowing when, in fact, it will be up sharply."


In other words, many reputable analysts think that the Bush administration routinely fakes even its short-term budget forecasts for the purposes of political spin. And the fakery in its long-term forecasts is much worse.


The administration claims to have a plan to cut the deficit in half over the next five years. But even Bruce Bartlett, a longtime tax-cut advocate, points out that "projections showing deficits falling assume that Bush's tax cuts expire on schedule." But Mr. Bush wants those tax cuts made permanent. That is, the administration has a "plan" to reduce the deficit that depends on Congress's not passing its own legislation.


Sounding definitely shrill, Mr. Bartlett says that "anyone who thinks we can overcome our fiscal mess without higher taxes is in denial." Far from backing down on his tax cuts, however, Mr. Bush is proposing to push the budget much deeper into the red with privatization programs that purport to offer something for nothing.


As Newsweek's Allan Sloan writes, "The president didn't exactly burden us with details about paying for all this. It's great marketing: show your audience the goodies but not the price tag. It's like going to the supermarket, picking out your stuff and taking it home without stopping at the checkout line to pay. The bill? That will come later."


Longtime readers will remember that that's exactly what I said, shrilly, about Mr. Bush's proposals during the 2000 campaign. Once again, he's running on the claim that 2 - 1 = 4.


So what's the real plan? Some not usually shrill people think that Mr. Bush will simply refuse to face reality until it comes crashing in: Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, says there's a 75 percent chance of a financial crisis in the next five years.


Nobody knows what Mr. Bush would really do about taxes and spending in a second term. What we do know is that on this, as on many matters, he won't tell the truth.


 



Elaine

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-06-2004
Fri, 09-10-2004 - 10:11am
Good article, Elaine, thanks for posting that!
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Fri, 09-10-2004 - 12:11pm
I still love the lack of response from the Democrats to Allan Greenspans comments the other day about how the economy is coming out of its short slumber, and is growing at a good rate again. Also about how Greenspan said that the Bush tax cuts were timed perfectly, and have really pushed the economy along.

What can you say to the man who has his fingers on the pulse of the nations economy? Who knows this better than this man and his advisors?

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Sat, 09-11-2004 - 12:29am
I'll believe it when I see it.

Just this week I talked to a woman whose husbands shop cut everyone's pay by THIRTY PERCENT.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Sat, 09-11-2004 - 11:14am
"I'll believe it when I see it.

Just this week I talked to a woman whose husbands shop cut everyone's pay by THIRTY PERCENT."

Maybe he's not a good businessman, or maybe there is a slump in his industry. During the previous Democratid administration that we had such a great economy under the company my husband works for cut tens of thousands of employees, botton to top, I've never seen so many middle management get the axe in such a short period of time. My husband and everyone else at his level skipped raises one year and bonuses of course, we watched the little stock we have in that company decrease in value till it was worth less than 3/4 of the previos year. My brother saw no raises at the company he worked for as well as 2 20% paycuts for over a 3 year period before he finally looked for another job. If I used my the company my husband works for, the company of our neighbor (that has actually improved under Bushes admin), and my brothers company as examples, I'd have a pretty darn good reason for saying that under Clinton the economy sucked. A lot of people would disagree with me though.

NIU Ribbon   Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Sat, 09-11-2004 - 5:57pm
What does that have to do with the comments made by Greenspan?

Even in the most robust of economies, some sectors will not perform as well as others, leading to layoffs, or cuts in pay.

The unemployment rate is the same today that it was when Clinton was running for re-election, and that is 5.4%.

If you listen regularly to economists, they all say that a certain level of unemployment is actually a good thing for the economy as this means that there is a large enough workforce that the cost of hiring does not become prohibitive for companies, who actually get into bidding wars with one another to hire the best candidates. Two of the economists I heard on the radio discussin this said that the prime unemployment rate for a balance between being good for economic growth and good for companies is around 5%.

Greenspan said that the economy had hit a soft patch for two or three monhts, and it appears that the economy is coming out of that soft patch and should continue on a positive trend, leading to future growth, and jobs.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sat, 09-11-2004 - 8:54pm
The topic of the thread is about cooking the books for politcal advantage.


Elaine

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Sun, 09-12-2004 - 10:35am
Bush will be the first president since Hoover to end his term with fewer jobs than when he started. Unemployment figures do not count people who gave up looking for work and people who are underemployed. Don't rely on just one indicator.

Jobs going overseas include low skilled manufacturing jobs, all types of computer related work,(including your credit info) medically related jobs such as reading xrays or cat scans, and skilled tool & die work. Whole factories are being unbolted & shipped overseas, with the former employees being offered a few dollars to sweep up the floors before the doors to the building are locked.

How can we maintain our strength & independence if we don't do our own computer support or our own medical reports, or make our own technological manufactured goods. Do you want our military supplied with weapons made overseas or here in the USA? Pretty soon you won't be able to order machine parts from a USA factory. That should be a concern for you.

http://www.freep.com/money/business/econ6e_20040906.htm

http://www.detnews.com/2004/specialreport/0409/12/a01-208777.htm

http://www.detnews.com/2004/specialreport/0409/12/a01-263624.htm

http://www.detnews.com/2004/specialreport/0403/18/a01-88829.htm

http://www.detnews.com/2004/specialreport/0403/18/a06-88790.htm

http://www.detnews.com/2004/specialreport/0403/18/a01-84173.htm

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Sun, 09-12-2004 - 2:53pm
Bush is also the first President since FDR to have an attack on US soil.

May economists have forecast that if it were not for 9/11, the economy would have rebounded sometime in the winter of 2001, and Bush would have actually seen an increase of jobs during his term as President, to date.