• About
  • Contact
  • Editorial
  • Policies
  • Archives
Angry Bear
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics
« Back

Steve Rattner on our economy

Dan Crawford | September 8, 2020 9:53 am

US/Global Economics

Steve Rattner on the Economy

Comments (3) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
3 Comments
  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    September 8, 2020 at 11:10 am

    An Economy in Crisis

    Steven Rattner – August 24

    … Yes, the economy did grow and produce jobs during Mr. Trump’s first three years in office. But its performance under Mr. Trump during that period was weaker than during the last three years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Almost exactly 1.5 million fewer jobs were created on Mr. Trump’s watch than during Mr. Obama’s final three years.

    Without facts, Mr. Trump resorts to lies. He has claimed more than 360 times that the economy on his watch was the “strongest ever.” Not even close. Annualized growth under Mr. Trump ranked seventh among his 11 predecessors. And growth actually slowed during each of Mr. Trump’s three years.

    To accomplish only that much, Mr. Trump needed one of the largest tax cuts in history, a cut that grossly favored business and wealthy Americans while exploding our deficit. Almost 85 percent of the benefits of the bill went to businesses and to those with incomes above $75,000.

    Americans in the top 20 percent of incomes received a 2.9 percent increase in their after-tax incomes while middle-class Americans got just a 1.6 percent increase. Businesses responded to the cuts by raising dividends and share buybacks to record highs while an initial increase in capital investment quickly faded.

    The Trump administration claimed that the legislation would pay for itself through increased economic activity. That, not surprisingly, turned out to be another lie. The deficit jumped to more than $1 trillion last year from $681 billion in 2017, the calendar year before the tax cut.

    Then came the virus.

    The president’s terrible handling of the crisis directly translated into the enormous problems we now face: an economy in its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

    From the start, Mr. Trump has been talking about a quick bounce back and a “V” shaped recovery. In April, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said the economy would be “rocking” by July. Less than two months ago, Mr. Trump declared, “America’s economy is now roaring back to life like nobody has ever seen before,” and claimed, “All of this incredible news is the result of historic actions my administration has taken.”

    But that’s not what we have. What we have is an economy in shambles.

    Our economy has contracted by 10.6 percent during the first six months of 2020, by far the biggest, fastest decline since the Great Depression. Unemployment soared to 14.7 percent. More than 22 million jobs were lost. And the pain was disproportionately felt by women, people of color, the young, lower-paid workers and those with less education. For example, nearly a quarter of jobs held by Americans with less than a high school education have disappeared, compared to only 2 percent of jobs held by those with college degrees.

    By almost every metric, Black Americans have fared far worse than whites, including higher rates of closure of Black-owned businesses. And that’s after struggling under the Trump administration since long before the virus hit — Black median household incomes, which were 66.5 percent of those of white households in 2016, had dropped to 62.4 percent of the level of white households by 2018.

    These statistics greatly understate the pain. True unemployment rose to nearly 32 percent in April after including all people working part time but seeking full-time jobs and those who were without jobs but wanted one. Even now, well into the promised recovery, 28 million Americans are receiving unemployment benefits. …

  • Terry says:
    September 8, 2020 at 11:15 am

    I agree with Rattner, not Kudlow. And here is the thing—like the virus you can not B. S. the economy. People know whether they have a job or not. The one thing they can do is convince people that do have jobs that they will keep them when the truth is that the drag on the economy will last years

  • Ron (RC) Weakley (a.k.a., Darryl for a while at EV) says:
    September 14, 2020 at 9:58 am

    But you have to give Donald credit that in his Bizarro World (also known as Htrae, which is “Earth” spelled backwards), then everything is going according to plan. A sociopath will do what a sociopath will do.

    OTOH, I agree with Terry except that there are still a bunch of voters that eat that BS up with a big spoon. If they ever do wake up to reality then they will be seeking vengeance because they are not the kind that would ever blame themselves for anything.

Featured Stories

Martin Wolf has a new book coming out . . .

Eric Kramer

Index of leading indicators says recession almost certain; so what of the coincident indicators?

NewDealdemocrat

Extending Capital to Nature, Reducing Nature to Capital

Peter Dorman

Trump and the debt ceiling

Eric Kramer

Contributors

Dan Crawford
Robert Waldmann
Barkley Rosser
Eric Kramer
ProGrowth Liberal
Daniel Becker
Ken Houghton
Linda Beale
Mike Kimel
Steve Roth
Michael Smith
Bill Haskell
NewDealdemocrat
Ken Melvin
Sandwichman
Peter Dorman
Kenneth Thomas
Bruce Webb
Rebecca Wilder
Spencer England
Beverly Mann
Joel Eissenberg

Subscribe

Blogs of note

    • Naked Capitalism
    • Atrios (Eschaton)
    • Crooks and Liars
    • Wash. Monthly
    • CEPR
    • Econospeak
    • EPI
    • Hullabaloo
    • Talking Points
    • Calculated Risk
    • Infidel753
    • ACA Signups
    • The one-handed economist
Angry Bear
Copyright © 2023 Angry Bear Blog

Topics

  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics
  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics

Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial
  • Policies
  • Archives