For $24.95, George W. Bush Will Share His ‘Strategies For Economic Growth’

That Bush believes the country needs his thoughts on how to create economic growth is laughable. After all, under his watch, “growth in investment, GDP, and employment all posted their worst performance of any post-war expansion,” while “overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967.” As the Economic Policy Institute found, “between the end of the 2001 recession (2001Q4) and the peak of that expansion (2007Q4), the U.S. economy experienced the worst economic expansion of the post-war era.”

As this chart shows, the only economic indicator on which Bush exceeded the average is corporate profits:


As the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted, “the competition for slowest growth is not even close, either. Growth from 2001 to 2007 averaged 2.39 percent a year (and growth from 2001 through the third quarter of 2010 averaged 1.66 percent). The decade with the second-worst showing for growth was 1971 to 1980 — the dreaded 1970s — but it still had 3.21 percent average growth.” Bush also presided over the formulation of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

And its not just under Bush that the nation saw lackluster economic growth. Over the last 50 years, in fact, two-thirds of the private sector jobs created in the country have come under Democratic administrations.


Read the whole story at Think Progress