So how about that Clinton Presidency?

Not to be a spoilsport as many are celebrating Obama Eve this month, but this very awesome New York Times graphic (found via The Big Picture) highlights some forgotten facts about past presidencies (not just Clinton’s).  Who says the traditional media is dead or stagnant?  This is excellent use of their mammoth resources and new(ish) technology.  Please go check it out and play with it.

As Barry’s cursor highlights, Reagan’s administration actually presided over our highest personal savings rate since Truman at 11.20% at the start of his presidency, although it was to quickly decline to 7% in his final years.  I do not want to give Reagan credit for the momentary spike, as the work of his predecessors made major contributions to the rise in savings and his administration did more to reverse it than to sustain it.

Most shocking may be the change in home prices.  Under George W. Bush, we had our only 3+ year consecutive 5+% increase in real home prices.  Only once before did we have even a 2 year 5+% consecutive increase:  At the tail end of the Clinton administration (I guess I could also include Carter’s +6.29% followed by a 4.98% increase).  Interestingly, two of the other many, many areas that George W. Bush is noted to have spectacularly failed in regards to the American economy is the stagnation of incomes among the bottom 99% of Americans, and the dearth in personal savings (and the shift to a society of financially juvenile debtors).

The share of income for the bottom 99% of Americans in the chart, from the start of the current administration to the present day, shows a fairly steady decline from a share of 81.78% to 77.18% (delta -4.7%).  Sad, but not disastrous.  Especially when the chart shows it as a steady decline that started during Clinton’s administrations (which actually reversed a short period of relative growth in Bush Sr’s administration).  Clinton presided over a share decrease from 85.76% to 78.48%, a fall of 7.28%.

The personal savings fall likewise started not with George W. Bush, but perhaps with Clinton.  Personal savings managed to grow slightly under George H.W. Bush, which was rather dramatically reversed under Clinton (from a 5.80% savings rate in 1993 to a 2.30% savings rate in 2000).  George W. Bush furthered this decline from 1.80% in 2001 to 0.60% in 2007.  Each of our last two president’s effectively reduced personal savings, during his administration, to a third of what they were when they took office.

Clinton is given great credit for his presiding over a momentous swing in the federal budget from a period of constant and extreme deficit, highlighted by the blood-red years of Ronald Reagan and the not-much-better years of Bush Sr., but when you tie that to the historically low interest rates at the time that reduced the cost of debt servicing for the nation, compared to any time other than the present and the early ’70s (see this chart tracking the Federal Funds Rate changes from 1970 to present), the economic windfall from skyrocketing home prices, the American consumer’s shift to that of a consumer-debtor nation, and the ascendancy of the tech boom, merely balancing the budget seems like a meager achievement.

Considering that Clinton, like George W. Bush, failed to increase personal savings, minimum wage, and the share of income for those other than the super-wealthy, the idea that what the nation needs is a return to the halcyon Clinton years is a mild lie.  I will not (and nor will anyone else, if they are being honest) argue that George W. Bush proved to be a better overseer of the American economy than Bill Clinton, but George W. Bush largely continued the slide that had begun perhaps in Clinton’s administration and had the poor fortune and appropriately poor insight to have the housing bubble (and tech bubble) blow up in his face.  Not to mention the fact that George W. Bush failed to use the revenues from the growing consumer culture as well as the real estate bubble to even balance the budget.

I’ll be ecstatic to see George W. Bush out of office, replaced by anyone-but-Palin, but I have extremely tempered expectations for what Barack Obama can personally bring to the Presidency when it comes to economics (I won’t make judgments on the opinions of his advisors until I know their level of influence on policy).  He reminds me very much of Bill Clinton, and I think the myth of the Clinton Economic Miracle is an extreme distortion (or based on extremely low expectations).  Especially now that we’ve seen both bubbles that Clinton’s administration saw the inflation of burst in our faces.

… and the cow goes moo