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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 30, 2005 / 29 Kislev, 5766

The most underappreciated story of 2005

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It wasn't too long ago that the Democrats were comparing President Bush to the alleged mastermind of the Great Depression. Back in 2003, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that Bush had "the worst record on jobs since Herbert Hoover," repeating a talking point meant to get the names "Bush" and "Hoover" within close proximity. If Democrats were to evaluate today's economy in similarly ridiculous Depression-era terms, they would have to hail Bush as the new FDR.


The robust American economy is the great underappreciated story of 2005. Like the purloined letter in Edgar Allan Poe's story, our superb economy is hidden in plain view, mostly ignored by a media that prefer to accentuate the negative and a Democratic Party that, for understandable partisan reasons, is loath to admit that anything could possibly be right in George Bush's America.


The end of the year brought a barrage of good news that it will take Herculean determination to determinedly ignore.


MasterCard reported that holiday sales increased 8.7 percent over last year. Sales of electronics were up 11 percent, and home furnishings were up 15 percent. Purchases exceeding $1,000 increased by 13 percent. The Wall Street Journal noted that economic pessimists harp about median incomes declining, but "judging by these holiday sales, somebody must have money."


Overall, consumer confidence rose in December to its highest levels since before Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast. The price of a gallon of gasoline declined to $2.18, down from $2.26 in November and well below the high of more than $3 in September. Weekly jobless claims are back to their pre-Katrina levels, and workers were earning 3.2 percent more than in November 2004.


Then, there was all the news to ignore from the third quarter of '05: 4.3 percent GDP growth; 215,000 new payroll jobs in November; 4.5 million payroll jobs added since May 2003; fixed investment up 8.6 percent; industrial production up 0.7 percent from October to November.


The unemployment rate is at a level that at one time would have been cause for universal celebration -- just 5 percent -- and according to Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (Va.), employment continues to grow at a "healthy pace." All of this comes on top of low inflation and extraordinarily high productivity gains. Heritage Foundation economist Tim Kane calculates, putting all the key factors together, that economically, 2005 is one of the best five years out of the past 25.


Just as blaming Bush for the recession of 2001 was always charging him with being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- the economic downturn and tech crash began before he took office -- he can't get all the credit for a fortuitous turn in the business cycle. (Although President Clinton somehow managed to claim personal responsibility for every tick up in GDP and every tick down in the unemployment rate.) It's the amazing resiliency, and endless capacity for innovation, of the American economy itself that is responsible for the latest spurt in growth.


But one Bush policy in particular did stoke the upturn. As a report of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress explained, consumer spending never stopped growing in the 2001 recession. It was a free-fall in investment that caused the economic stall. Bush2003 tax cuts on dividends and capital gains were meant to recharge that particular engine in the economy, and they did. According to Kane, investment has grown at a rate of 9.2 percent since those tax cuts, higher than the average of 6 percent of the past two decades.


No matter. In the Bush economy, the press specializes in making people feel badly about doing well. The coverage in coming weeks will surely obsess about high home-heating bills. Since no economy can achieve a state of Zen perfection, when spring comes, there will be something else to be discouraged about, perhaps the softening housing market. Recent business surveys show companies are planning to increase hiring in 2006. That's a sign the vigorous economy is set to roll into 2006, appreciated or not.

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