Fake news
This chart caught my fancy after reading the interview with Rep. Tom Cole from the previous post. There is still the tendency to see the stock market (or GDP) as a proxy for the economy. And it is a time honored tradition for politicians to claim credit for economic gain in convoluted story telling:
(I could not find the attribution for this graph but will add when I find it)
Trump bump versus Obama effect on the stock market for the first nine months in office of each president. See also Tax cut plan economics
This is one of those charts that should have its y-axis examined.
I think it should be linear with the origin at zero.
Good catch Arne. Very misleading scaling on the y axis.
Actually for the data range involved a log scale is more appropriate. Otherwise the graph would tend to look like a hockey stick. I suspect Tufte of the Visual display of quantitative information would agree. To take a long term example say you graph the Dow 30 since it was founded a linear scale would hide the great depression in the noise at the bottom.
Here is a link to a site that graphs the dow since 1915 inflation adjusted. Note it has a log scale on the Y axis. You can deselect the log scale if you like. and you will see how it looks : http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart
If you want to see the variation in the early years with the vast increase in the index over time the log scale does a better job.
Lyle,
“Actually for the data range involved a log scale is more appropriate.”
I disagree. 10 years does not require a log scale. And it is visually misleading if you are trying to compare different values along the x axis.
If you are used to semi log plots it is not a problem. As I pointed out there is at least one site where you can take your choice on the plot type. Of course if you have the original data you can used your spread sheet program of choice to graph the data any way you want.
In any case on the semi-log plot note that the slope declines in 2011 and flattens out in 2014-2015 and gets a steeper slope in late 2016, continuing this year.
Such foresight to anticipate 8 years in advance! That’s what I call forward thinking.
Lyle,
Thanks, I did the conversion. Needless to say, the non log (normal) graph looks a lot different from the graph in the post. All you have to do to visualize it is to know that, since Trump was elected, the Dow is up about 6400, more in 1 year than Obama did in the previous 6 years (2011-2016).
So, far from continuing the Obama bull market as depicted in the misleading graph, the stock market under the Trump admin has been a sharp upward departure from the Obama trend.
So this post definitely qualifies as FAKE NEWS!
Sorry, “more in 1 year than Obama previous 5 years”
The question is what is the percent gain not the actual gain. For 2017 till now the gain is 25.4% per year, earlier years are 2016 13,42% 2015 -2.33%, 2014 7.52%, 2013 26.5%, 2012 7.26%, 2011 5.53% 2010 11.2%, 2009 18,82% and 2008 -33.4%. So this year so far is about as good as Obama’s best year. It is the slope of the curve on a semi log plot that tells just this tale, Note the 4 year bias in the data relating to timing of presidential elections, and that 2013 was marginally better than 2017 to date but it may catch up by Dec 31.
Trillions of dollars spent and that’s ALL we got. meanwhile, the country’s infrastructure is falling apart all around us, and no banksters who crashed the economy were prosecuted. Thanks, Obama.
It would be better just to show year over year growth on a linear plot. That makes it clearer what is being shown. People can compare to their estimate of a realistic return.
(So, I was mostly wrong since slope is the indicator.)