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- ChristopherHedges.com
- Illiana Expressway
Jan
13
A Cyclical Election Year Downturn?
Filed Under economy
My family and I were taking a walk around the block today and ran into a neighbor walking her dog.
We were chit-chatting and the conversation turned to the economy. She mentioned something that has stuck with me.
The economy always seems to talk a dive around election time.
Around the 1980 election, the economy was in the tubes. I remember sitting in gas lines with my dad hoping we’d be able to get some gas, just like everyone else queued up. We didn’t have a house — luckily the military took care of that — but I doubt that we would have been able to get one even if we had wanted with the double-digit interest rates for mortgages during that time.
Fast forward to 1992. I was graduating from college and looking to get out into the work force. The economy wasn’t too hot, so I took a temp job and ended up getting a nice assignment at IU. I ended up going back to school at Valparaiso.
Jump ahead another 15 years and we have the news that the economy is dropping like a rock — right before election time.
With a wave of negative signs gathering force, economists, policy makers and investors are debating just how much the economy could be damaged in 2008. Huge and complex, the American economy has in recent years been aided by a global web of finance so elaborate that no one seems capable of fully comprehending it. That makes it all but impossible to predict how much the economy can be expected to fall before it stabilizes.
It will be interesting to see if there is another downturn about 12 to 15 years from now right before a presidential election.
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4 Responses to “A Cyclical Election Year Downturn?”
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Chris, I think the media needs a recession so they can report something. I really don’t think things are that bad, and most of the real estate problem was due to poor reporting on the mortgage “crisis”
Hey head over to the nwiblogs site, I found a list method for voting for the blogs in NW Indiana. I grabbed it on squidoo, and it’s pretty easy to slam on a blog, I think anyone can grab it and use it actually.
Hi Steve,
I think recessions are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you repeat it enough, money managers will tighten up the money available to businesses so that they’ll have to lay off people and cut back on spending.
I’ll have to check out the new listing method for the NWI Blogs. Anything that can be done to help get some publicity for the Region’s bloggers is a good thing.
Well, the last recession supposedly started in March of ‘01, just AFTER Dubya took office.
Of course, the NASDAQ peaked in March of ‘00. I’d say that the recession truly started in 2000.
It may not be all that much of stretch. Elections bring a lot of uncertainty. If Hillary or Obama become president, taxes are going up. That can’t be good for some people, and in anticipation of that, they hold off on spending and risky investments.
Hi Buzz,
You might be right. The downturns — the economy pulling back — always seems to happen when it is perceived that major changes are coming.
Of course, nothing ever stays down and it always seems that we do better than ever after a downturn! Buy low and sell high — when the economy goes down, that’s just a buying opportunity.