The Streisand Effect

Babs is at it again - unintentionally calling attention to inconvenient information.

I have seen this before, but this morning, Barbara Streisand tweeted a meme blaming every Republican president since Reagan for creating recessions that every Democrat president fixed.

Reagan’s “recessions” were 1) driven by dealing with the economic disasters from the Carter administration and the 2) spiking of oil prices caused by the Iranian Islamic revolution.

As far as Bush Senior, after the lengthy peacetime expansion of the 1980s, inflation began to increase, and the Federal Reserve responded by raising interest rates from 1986 to 1989. This weakened but did not stop growth, but in combination of the subsequent 1990 oil price shock, the debt accumulation of the 1980s, and growing consumer pessimism combined with the weakened economy did undergo a brief recession.

Bush the Lesser had to deal with the fallout from Clinton’s Dot Com bust, 9/11, and the mortgage bubble burst driven by Democrat policies and extortion that were forced banks and on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to soak up bad mortgages issued to people who could not afford them for social engineering purposes.

Trump’s “recession” was triggered by panic created by inconsistent messaging and panic incited by the CDC and state level public health agencies. Add to that the economic disaster caused by Democrat governors conspiring to shut down a national economy during the Covid pandemic.

The fact is Presidents inherit problems that were created by policy decisions before they were elected. Reagan, Bush, and Obama had to deal with existing recessions after they were inaugurated in 1981, 2001 and 2009, respectively, and to a recession, every one of the inherited recessions have Democrat fingerprints on them. Democrat policies always have a negative effect on our national economy – and the things they do during their terms to avoid an economic downturn deepen the wound.

Obama avoided an economic downturn with “qualitative easing,” which was merely juicing the money supply by printing dollars.

In line with the effect of lagging policy decisions that resulted in downturns, the recoveries are similarly the result of lagging policy decisions. The Clinton and Obama “recoveries” such as the were, were the result of actions taken by the Reagan, Bush, and Trump administrations – actually, Bill Clinton owes his “recovery” to Newt Gingrich and a Republican House.

To prove the left can’t meme - Trump did add $7 trillion to the debt, not the deficit and the unemployment numbers were due to the pandemic economic shutdowns, which he did not do.

Biden does not have a “recovery” because all the numbers for which he takes credit are the result of people coming back to work after having their lives frozen in time. Biden’s coming recession will hit during the next administration. I hope that is under Trump because Biden and his team have absolutely no idea what to do about it. The are already talking about massive tax increases which will piss on any economic spark there might be in the future.

But the economic illiterates are cheering on idiotic memes posted by Hollywood ignoramuses, as if Barbara Streisand, proud 1959 graduate of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York, was the second coming of Milton Friedman.

Spoiler alert - she is not.