Old Retired Guy Blog

October 17, 2008

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Economics (Page 1/3)

I had a class in Economics once; I think I was in 10th grade at the time. I don't remember anything from that class, but even if I did, I doubt I would understand what's happening to our economy lately.

Since I enjoy working with data and trying to figure out what numbers mean, if anything, I thought that I would look up some information about some of America's previous times of economic difficulties. On the CNBC website I found the following summary of all of the recessions that have occurred in the US from 1901 (the first year of Teddy Roosevelt's administration) through 2001 (the first year of George W. Bush's administration).

US Recessions from 1901 through 2001
Dates	Duration	President	Party
Sept. 1902-Aug. 1904	23	T. Roosevelt	R
May 1907-June 1908	13	T. Roosevelt	R
Jan. 1910-Jan. 1912	24	Taft	R
Jan. 1913-Dec. 1914	23	Wilson	D
Aug. 1918-March 1919	7	Wilson	D
Jan. 1920-July 1921	18	Wilson	D
May 1923-July 1924	14	Coolidge	R
Oct. 1926-Nov. 1927	13	Coolidge	R
Aug. 1929-March 1933	43	Hoover	R
May 1937-June 1938	13	FDR	D
Feb. 1945-Oct. 1945	8	FDR	D
Nov. 1948-Oct. 1949	11	Truman	D
July 1953-May 1954	10	Eisenhower	R
Aug. 1957-April 1958	8	Eisenhower	R
April 1960-Feb. 1961	10	Eisenhower	R
Dec. 1969-Nov. 1970	11	Nixon	R
Nov. 1973-March 1975	16	Nixon/Ford	R
Jan. 1980-July 1980	6	Carter	D
July 1981-Nov. 1982	16	Reagan	R
July 1990-March 1991	8	Reagan	R
March 2001-Nov. 2001	8	G.W. Bush	R

Now, don't ask me what they define as a recession or how they know when it starts or stops. I'm not an economist. I have to assume that some economically astute person came up with this chart and that the source is reliable. What can we say about this information?

In the 101 years from 1901 through 2001 the US has experienced 21 recessions.
The recessions varied in length from 6 months to 43 months for a total of 303 months of recession.
14 of the 21 recessions (66.7%) occurred under Republican presidents; 7 of 21 (33.3%) occurred under Democratic presidents.
217 of the 303 months (71.6%) occurred under Republican presidents; 86 of the 303 months (26.4%) occurred under Democratic presidents.

This sure looks like Republicans have more of a tendency to be in charge when recessions strike. But, maybe that's just because there were so many more Republican presidents than Democratic presidents during that 101 year period.

Economics
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