Monday, December 10, 2007

THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE "CLINTON ECONOMY"

Two unique events influenced the United States economy during Bill Clinton's tenure. Many have forgotten these events and the result is a general misunderstanding of the real drivers behind the "Clinton Economy."

1) Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.

The web was released as a free service by the CERN research facility in 1993. A massive and unprecedented spending boom accompanied the popularization of the web.

2) Another anomalous, technology-related event was the "Year 2000" computer remediation effort (or "Y2K"). An immense repair investment -- estimated at $300 billion -- occurred in the late 1990's as governments and companies rushed to make their legacy computer systems "Y2K-compliant."

* * *

The massive surge in technology spending and productivity associated with these events were coincident with the Clinton Presidency. In fact, they had absolutely nothing to do with any program, initiative or legislation associated with the Clinton administration.

Put simply, Bobo the Chimpanzee could have been President during the late 90's tech boom. Come to think of it, even a philandering, disbarred former attorney who sold missile secrets to the Chinese for campaign donations while allowing terrorists to relentlessly attack U.S. interests could have been President.


And the tech boom -- the so-called "Clinton economy" -- would have happened regardless.

So when Hillary tells us that she'll duplicate Bill's economic track record, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Cross-posted at Doug Ross @ Journal

1 comment:

  1. y2k was the agw of its time.

    and the tech boom rapidly became "Bubba's Bubbles" -


    the irrational exuberance over the so-called new economy led to a CORRECTION and a recession.

    and also, let's not forget that AL yes ALL as in EVERYSINGLELITTLEBIT of the corporate malfeasance scandals happened on Bubba's Watch.

    Bush had to clean up Bubba's mess.

    therefore, not only should Bubba NOT get credit for what went right, he and greenspan should get BLAMED for the excesses which went wrong.

    the clinton economy was a potemkin economy in many respects.

    and ALL the growth which was good happened AFTER the GOP cut the size of government and CUT TAXES.

    ALSO: the unemployment rate buring Bush is as low or lower than during clinton. ditto home ownership numbers among blacks and hispanics.

    bush's economy is better in most ways than clinton's yet bush and the GOP get ZERO credit.

    gee....

    i

    wonder

    why!?!?!?!?!?!?

    ReplyDelete