Re: Jeff St. Clair on the Clintons

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

one reason why people look back to the Clinton years with nostalgia is
that overall official unemployment was pretty low for a couple of
years. It was under 5% starting in 1997 and then hit 4% in 2000.
(FWIW, the U rate for African-Americans fell by 2.4 percentage points
during those years, a greater fall than overall.)

But that wasn't Bill C's doing. His fiscal policy, if anything,
encouraged recession. It was the big surge in profit rates (up to 1997
or so) and then the stock market bubble that encouraged the boom of
the late 1990s. If government was involved, it was Alan the G at the
Fed, who allowed unemployment to go so low (because there was no
inflation threat seen). The private sector's surge and monetary
policy's permission delayed the recession to 2001.

On 2/21/07, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair02212007.html
>
> --
>
> www.marxmail.org


--
Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright