Which US President had the most months of below 6% unemployment?

[Sallow]

Obama would have not invaded a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11/01 Terrorist Attacks wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and costing thousands of lives in the process.

That's pretty much a given.

Had Obama lost in 08, we'd still be there.

As for the economic collapse, Bush's administration had a large hand in that through refusing to regulate the banking industry so no points there.

9/11 was irrelevant to the necessity of removing SADDAM from power in Iraq. The sanctions and weapons embargo put on SADDAM's regime in the early 1990s had by 2002 crumbled and SADDAM was selling Billions of dollars of oil through the black market. France, China and Russia were all ignoring and violating the sanctions with Saddam for their own reasons. China was providing military assistance to Saddam improving his air defense systems and introducing fiber optics for better communications making it easier for SADDAM to target US fighter planes patrolling the no fly zones.

To continue on with that situation would simply lead to Saddam regaining his past capabilities to threaten the region and would make any attempt to stop him in the future far more costly in terms of blood and treasure.

Saddam had to be removed in 2003 to protect the vital persian gulf oil and natural gas supplies that the global economy depends on. Removing Saddam in 2003 saved lives and prevented a far worse conflict in the future.

As for Bush and the economy, Bush was not responsible for deregulation. Its true the Bush administration did not succeed in reigning in deregulation, but that was not all their fault.

Bush didn't need to deregulate anything.

He defunded the regulators and populated the agencies with neocons.

 

[Truthseeker420]

Had Obama lost in ’08 nothing in Iraq would likely be different. We did not even leave because Obama, we left because we could not obtain another SOFA, something that Obama was trying to get.

By the way, they might tell you that we are not there but that is bullshit. We are STILL there, just in a smaller force.

Not according to John McCain.

Sorry, those are the facts.

Unfortunately candy, they are not the fact. They are imaginations and quotes. What ACTUALLY happened was the SOFA ended, Obama TRIED to extend it and he completely failed. McCain would have been no more successful as the Iraqis were asking for something that was not tenable.

Bush only signed the agreement because Republicans lost the White House and wanted to take credit for something he had no control over...

 

[boedicca]

AA - good catch.

The Bush admin tried to roll back the power of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bawwwney was one of the main body shields preventing that.

For anyone who really wants to understand the culprits who created the housing crisis, I highly recommend reading "Reckless Endangerment".

Bush still did fuel the fire by pushing home ownership and implementing the American Dream Down-payment Act, with the help of artificially low interest rates from his political buddy Alan Greenspan.

He is still partially to blame.

I didn't say Bush had no responsibility. He misguidedly used housing to get the country out of the 2000/2001 dotcom-9/11 recession. But the seeds were sown much earlier via CRA, the Fed, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, ACORN, and Congress....and Big Banks and the Rating Agencies who profited from the socialized risk and privatized profit.

 

[U2Edge]

That is absolutely not true. Had Barnie Frank listened to Bush and reigned in Freddie and Fannie we may have avoided or pushed back this crisis. Anyway, all of Congress, especially Democrats, love the big bankers with their big donations. Just ask Obama.

The democrat party gained the majority in Congress in the 2nd half of Bush's 2nd term. That means that the chairmanships of all the critical committees are now the responsibility of the democrat party. Fannie Mae was the responsibility of the House Banking Committee chaired by Barney Frank. The last thing Americans heard from chairman Frank was that "Fannie was solvent" just before the election. It turns out that Fannie wasn't solvent and maybe, just maybe, chairman Frank nudged Fannie over the edge just before the election as the biggest October surprise in history. Nobody in the media was curious enough to ask Frank the important questions and he went on to fame and fortune and marriage to some guy and retired without ever being called before a congressional committee. The collapse of Fannie was never investigated by the democrat controlled congress. Things like that happen when democrats are in charge. .

The whole "It's all Frank's fault!" is downright laughable and one of the biggest jokes of an excuse from those on the far right.

W and the GOP implemented their "less regulation!" policies on the big bankers, allowing them to run wild giving out predatory loans.

The same thing happened with big oil when W and the GOP approved the deep sea drilling that caused the Gulf oil spill disaster.

Uh, did you ever hear about who repealed the Glass Steagall act?

 

[U2Edge]

Ok, so Bush had 36 months of 6% unemployment or lower.

Out of those 36 months, was the unemployment rate going up or going down?

NO, he had 83 months BELOW 6%! As for going up or down, it did both every year, but in 83 of the 96 months, it was below 6%!

 

[U2Edge]

Which U.S. President had the most months of below 6% unemployment?

ANSWER: George W. Bush - During the 96 months that George Bush was president, 83 of those months saw the country experience unemployment that was below 6%. No other President in U.S. history has a higher total! In second and third place are Eisenhower with 79 and Clinton with 76.

Bush entered office with UE at around 4% and doubled it before he left.

Atta boy Georgie!

In February of 2008, 7 years after Bush first came into office, unemployment was at 4.5%. Again, you have took look at the whole time in office in order to judge what life was like. The last 3 months of Bush's administration does not define the entire 96 months he was in office!

 

[U2Edge]

W left office with a total of negative 636,000 jobs and we were losing over 1/2 a million a month. Thanks W!

But that was just the last few months, for the most part, on average, workers had it better under Bush, month after month, than most other Presidents.

When you average out the trip...the Titanic had a great voyage.

In case you didn't hear yet, the Titanic sank, the United States is still here. Very different results.

But hey, I guess you might be the type of guy who would only judge a resume on ONLY the last 3 months and to hell with anything before that right?

 

[U2Edge]

To me, it's kind of like a poker player bragging about how much ahead he was for most of the night and neglecting to tell you he lost his shirt before he left the table

I guess your another guy that would prefer to only be judged on what he has done over the past 3 months, and to hell with all he had done prior to that, right? Is that really the proper way to judge the success or failure of a person?

If you want to know what life was like under Bush during his 96 months in office, why are you only looking at his last 3 months in office?

 

[U2Edge]

sure. conservative policies "work" for about 8 or 9 years before the bubble pops (which really is just when the wealthy pull their portion out of the ponzi scheme and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces).

Just ask George H.W. Bush or Herbert Hoover--following a neoliberal president will leave you with terrible employment numbers 100% of the time.

It was Bill Clinton that repealed Glass Steagall and is largely responsible for the "bubble" that popped.

 

[Black_Label]

sure. conservative policies "work" for about 8 or 9 years before the bubble pops (which really is just when the wealthy pull their portion out of the ponzi scheme and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces).

Just ask George H.W. Bush or Herbert Hoover--following a neoliberal president will leave you with terrible employment numbers 100% of the time.

It was Bill Clinton that repealed Glass Steagall and is largely responsible for the "bubble" that popped.

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

 

[U2Edge]

sure. conservative policies "work" for about 8 or 9 years before the bubble pops (which really is just when the wealthy pull their portion out of the ponzi scheme and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces).

Just ask George H.W. Bush or Herbert Hoover--following a neoliberal president will leave you with terrible employment numbers 100% of the time.

It was Bill Clinton that repealed Glass Steagall and is largely responsible for the "bubble" that popped.

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

The FACT remains, George W. Bush is the President with the most months of unemployment BELOW 6% in United States History!

 

[Lumpy 1]

sure. conservative policies "work" for about 8 or 9 years before the bubble pops (which really is just when the wealthy pull their portion out of the ponzi scheme and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces).

Just ask George H.W. Bush or Herbert Hoover--following a neoliberal president will leave you with terrible employment numbers 100% of the time.

It was Bill Clinton that repealed Glass Steagall and is largely responsible for the "bubble" that popped.

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

You Clinton Lewinski wanna-Be's crack me up..

--------------------------------

Clinton, however, sowed the seeds of the Great Recession by helping to inflate the housing bubble, a key part of the financial debacle of 2007. But this wasn’t because he (not George W. Bush) signed two financial deregulation bills. Although Clinton legalized interstate banking in 1994 and commercial/investment banking combinations in 1999, that had nothing to do with the meltdown.

Then why is Clinton culpable? Because his secretary of housing and urban development, Andrew Cuomo, current governor of New York and a likely 2016 presidential aspirant, accelerated easy-housing policies and inflated the housing bubble, setting the stage for its collapse.

The meltdown was the consequence of a combination of the easy money and low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve and the easy housing engineered by a variety of government agencies and policies. Those agencies include the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and two nominally private “government-sponsored enterprises” (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The agencies — along with laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act (passed in the 1970s, then fortified in the Clinton years), which required banks to make loans to people with poor and nonexistent credit histories — made widespread homeownership a national goal. This all led to a home-buying frenzy and an explosion of subprime and other non-prime mortgages, which banks and GSEs bundled into dubious securities and peddled to investors worldwide. Hovering in the background was the knowledge that the federal government would bail out troubled “too-big-to-fail” financial corporations, including Fannie and Freddie.

Clinton?s Legacy: The Financial and Housing Meltdown - Reason.com

 

[Black_Label]

It was Bill Clinton that repealed Glass Steagall and is largely responsible for the "bubble" that popped.

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

The FACT remains, George W. Bush is the President with the most months of unemployment BELOW 6% in United States History!

W was riding the wave of Clinton's booming economy. Once he and the GOP were done destroying it and turning the nation's policies into their radical right wing dream, the economy crashed and we were losing over 1/2 a million jobs a month because of these fuckers.

W ended his presidency with a net lose in private sector jobs, only a complete idiot pulls that one off, and those idiots were the GOP.

 

[Lumpy 1]

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

The FACT remains, George W. Bush is the President with the most months of unemployment BELOW 6% in United States History!

W was riding the wave of Clinton's booming economy. Once he and the GOP were done destroying it and turning the nation's policies into their radical right wing dream, the economy crashed and we were losing over 1/2 a million jobs a month because of these fuckers.

W ended his presidency with a net lose in private sector jobs, only a complete idiot pulls that one off, and those idiots were the GOP.

Who controlled the House and Senate the last 6 years of the Clinton presidency, I know, I just wondered if you did.....

(ahem...the dot com boom & bubble burst)

I'm convinced Clinton /Democrats have no problem stealing credit when undeserved but blame..not ever, no way...fowget about it..

 

[Black_Label]

The FACT remains, George W. Bush is the President with the most months of unemployment BELOW 6% in United States History!

W was riding the wave of Clinton's booming economy. Once he and the GOP were done destroying it and turning the nation's policies into their radical right wing dream, the economy crashed and we were losing over 1/2 a million jobs a month because of these fuckers.

W ended his presidency with a net lose in private sector jobs, only a complete idiot pulls that one off, and those idiots were the GOP.

Who controlled the House and Senate the last 6 years of the Clinton presidency, I know, I just wondered if you did.....

(ahem...the dot com boom & bubble burst)

I'm convinced Clinton /Democrats have no problem stealing credit when undeserved but blame..not ever, no way...fowget about it..

So it was all the GOP's fault for the dot com and housing market collapses? Thanks for confirming that

 

[Lumpy 1]

W was riding the wave of Clinton's booming economy. Once he and the GOP were done destroying it and turning the nation's policies into their radical right wing dream, the economy crashed and we were losing over 1/2 a million jobs a month because of these fuckers.

W ended his presidency with a net lose in private sector jobs, only a complete idiot pulls that one off, and those idiots were the GOP.

Who controlled the House and Senate the last 6 years of the Clinton presidency, I know, I just wondered if you did.....

(ahem...the dot com boom & bubble burst)

I'm convinced Clinton /Democrats have no problem stealing credit when undeserved but blame..not ever, no way...fowget about it..

So it was all the GOP's fault for the dot com and housing market collapses? Thanks for confirming that

You don't seem to be following along well...just sayin

 

[jknowgood]

Obama would have not invaded a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11/01 Terrorist Attacks wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and costing thousands of lives in the process.

That's pretty much a given.

Had Obama lost in 08, we'd still be there.

As for the economic collapse, Bush's administration had a large hand in that through refusing to regulate the banking industry so no points there.

You are right! Obama would NOT have authorized EVEN though Congress passed legislation based on the broken 1991 Cease Fire that your friend Saddam did after signing the 1991 Cease fire!
You are right that Obama would have continued the sanctions that were starving 50,000 Iraqis a year because Obama couldn't say no to Saddam who would be laughing all the time at the bowing and scraping forgiveness Obama!
You are right! Obama would have blamed Americans for being such supporters of Israel and blame Israel for firing back in response to the 1,000s of missiles fired on them!
You are right! Obama wouldn't care that the people of Mesopotamia.. legendary Biblical Garden of Eden was being destroyed ecologically by Saddam in retribution for the 500,000
people that opposed him!
You are right! Obama would blame our military .. after all as a Senator he said that our military methodically and systematically were "air-raiding villages and killing civilians" ALL THE TIME!!

You are right. Obama has NO respect for keeping agreements or promises! SO Yes... 50,000 people a year would starve!
You are right. Obama would be just as you are, "OK" with Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay Hussein used electric drills on people while cutting out their tongues?
The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 5 - The London Times + (UK free press)

You are right! Obama would have done NOTHING to help starving people, 28 million people have free elections.. (Obama admired Saddam for getting 100% of the votes)![/
QUOTE]
Don't forget the red line he would draw, and then back down from it when sadaam would tell him no.

 

[Cuyo]

It was Bill Clinton that repealed Glass Steagall and is largely responsible for the "bubble" that popped.

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

The FACT remains, George W. Bush is the President with the most months of unemployment BELOW 6% in United States History!

Doesn't matter, it's a meaningless statistic, chosen for display by the OP (or his source) due to its result.

What's the relevance of counting months with <6% UE? Have you ever heard this metric used before this thread on this message board?

Why not tout the POTUS who had the lowest mean unemployment throughout his tenure (Appears to be LBJ)? Or the lowest recorded during his tenure (3.2%, Ike)? Or the POTUS with the largest drop during his tenure (Reagan)? Or the sharpest drop (Truman)?

See what I'm getting at here?

 

[U2Edge]

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

The FACT remains, George W. Bush is the President with the most months of unemployment BELOW 6% in United States History!

Doesn't matter, it's a meaningless statistic, chosen for display by the OP (or his source) due to its result.

What's the relevance of counting months with <6% UE? Have you ever heard this metric used before this thread on this message board?

Why not tout the POTUS who had the lowest mean unemployment throughout his tenure (Appears to be LBJ)? Or the lowest recorded during his tenure (3.2%, Ike)? Or the POTUS with the largest drop during his tenure (Reagan)? Or the sharpest drop (Truman)?

See what I'm getting at here?

The fact that it has never been used before is the very reason it was presented. Most people are ignorant of it. They don't realize that the President they always bash and call the worst President of all time, is actually #1 in US history when it comes to having the most months of unemployment below 6%! Its fact that makes all the non-factual rants against Bush seem absurd.

Many economist, at least up to the 1990s, consider 6% unemployment to be the natural rate of unemployment. Thats probably not accurate, but still, having an unemployment rate below 6% is typically a sign of a good job market. While George W. Bush was President, the unemployment rate for most of his time in office was below 6%. No matter how you stack, that is good figure and means that most Americans enjoyed good job opportunities, kept their jobs, for most of the time Bush was in office. It was generally a very good environment, one of the best the country has ever had over an 8 year period.

So no, that is not meaningless at all. Its a fact showing that things were generally good while Bush was President.

You wouldn't tout the lowest recorded unemployment, because that just represents ONE MONTH. The largest drop in a Presidents tenure does not necessarily reflect "good times". You'll still have dozens of months of unemployment that was painful for society with that metric.

The lowest mean unemployment is a good metric, and George W. Bush stands very well on that list even though he is not #1. LBJ is #1, but he did not serve a full two terms in office like Bush did. Plus, he was helped by the Vietnam War Draft and Cold War to help fill out his employment, plus stay at home mothers were still a feature of society back then.

But below 6% unemployment is a good metric as well, because it was once regarded as the natural rate of unemployment by economist and any monthly unemployment rate below 6% is always regarded as a good unemployment rate. George Bush had 83 months of that during his two terms and its the most ever by a US President in US history. Its an interesting fact that most Americans are ignorant of, especially those Americans screaming that George Bush is the worst President ever.

 

[U2Edge]

Clinton had nothing to do with the W housing crisis, nice try. It's another example of what happens when the GOP gets full control of the white house, they completely destroy the nation.

The FACT remains, George W. Bush is the President with the most months of unemployment BELOW 6% in United States History!

W was riding the wave of Clinton's booming economy. Once he and the GOP were done destroying it and turning the nation's policies into their radical right wing dream, the economy crashed and we were losing over 1/2 a million jobs a month because of these fuckers.

W ended his presidency with a net lose in private sector jobs, only a complete idiot pulls that one off, and those idiots were the GOP.

That is actually not true. During Bush's first year in office, the economy went into recession. So, the Bush administration actually had a difficult situation to deal with from the start.

Despite that, George Bush got the record while he was in office for having the most months of unemployment BELOW 6%. He is #1 in US history in that regard!