Now that Hillary Clinton has officially entered the presidential campaign, she'll have a major albatross to confront, says Charles Gasparino, a senior correspondent for Fox Business Network.
That's an economy that has grown at an annual rate of just 1.9 percent under President Obama, the slowest pace in nearly 70 years, he writes in the
New York Post.
"Her [Clinton's] big fear, according to the Wall Street Democrats I speak to, is being stuck with (and blamed for) her old boss' economy," Gasparino states. "That's because the economy has never fully recovered from the financial collapse that President Obama faced when he took office."
Growth slowed to 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter, matching the post-recession average, and many experts predict the first quarter number will come in even weaker.
"Fact is, many analysts believe the economy is worse than the headline numbers, filtered through the Obamaites and their media lackeys, suggest," Gasparino writes.
"The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has cut its projected growth rate for the economy to nearly zero for the first quarter of 2015," he notes. "That’s right, zero, which is better than negative — but not enough for Hillary Clinton to be picking new color patterns for the curtains in the Oval office."
Meanwhile, conventional wisdom has it that recessions are a very bad thing, throwing millions out of work and repressing wealth creation. The Great Recession of 2007-09 is often cited as example No. 1.
But this reasoning has it all wrong, says
John Tamny, political economy editor for Forbes. "Recessions are beautiful," he writes.
"Put more plainly, recessions are misnamed. They should be referred to as 'recovery.' They signal recovery whereby the economy is cleansed of all that was holding it down in the first place."
Tamny views recessions as a purging of the bad to let in the good. "Recessions are a sign that Webvan is being starved of capital so that Google can receive it in abundance," he states.
This largely explains why the Federal Reserve's massive easing program is so ineffective, Tamny argues. "The very idea that it would presume to medicate, or neuter that which is so healthy (recession) is a certain sign of how misguided are those who practice 'monetary policy.'"
The Fed has kept its federal funds rate target at a record low of zero to 0.25 percent since December 2008. And its balance sheet has ballooned to $4.5 trillion through quantitative easing.
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