I did some unscientific digging today and plugged some numbers in a spread sheet. I’m no statistician so I did my best. I listed all the Presidents, years they served, average unemployment rate, average inflation rate and the misery index for each year since 1948.

If you look at the numbers, Bill Clinton and G.W Bush generally faired the best. By far the worst numbers came in the Jimmy Carter years. The economy was in pretty bad shape and excluding the recent foreclosure rate it was even worse than it is now.

After Ronald Reagan took office he ramped up defense spending and slashed by a huge margin the federal tax rates including the cap gains. It didn’t take long for the numbers to turn around for the better. In fact when he cut taxes, revenues to the federal government almost doubled as did spending by the democratic controlled congress.

By in large the numbers posted along side G.W. Bush were pretty stable and in line with those from Bill Clinton. It’s only been in the last six months that the economy really has gone in the weeds mostly caused by the housing crash.

If you look at the unemployment numbers for this year and last they were actually pretty low on average (except for the last six months). I don’t attribute unemployment as a major factor in people loosing homes. It’s clear that many (not all) but many got themselves in too deep and purchased at exactly the wrong time (peak of the market) and couldn’t hang on to their house. This started long before the unemployment numbers went up.

So by and large other than a few factors, we’ve seen some pretty bad economies over the years and for the most part they recovered pretty much on their own. Except for two occasions. After Reagan, it recovered dramatically after the tax cuts and defense spending. After FDR’s new deal with huge social spending initiatives to pull the economy back, the great depression was prolonged by as much as seven years some would say.

You have to factor in wars and other misc events over the last 60 years but for the most part both Democrat and Republicans have see good economies and bad economies.

But never in our history has the government EVER spent 1.5 trillion dollars and pulled us out of a recession successfully nor do they need to. It’s a BAD idea. I can only surmise they know this to be true and the bail outs are nothing more than a grab for private sector control and to make yet even more people dependent on the government.

Our elected leaders have lost their minds and Obama is leading the charge while the spineless Republicans sit back and watch.

Obama's economic policies are bad news for this country and all the warm fuzzy inauguration happiness won't change it. It's one thing when the economy is down, it's quite another to drive a stake in it's heart with strategies that have failed miserably in the past.