Word: slowdown
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Even before he was declared President-elect, George W. Bush had become bear in chief. For weeks he?s been warning that the U.S. economy is in for hard times. He may steer clear himself of the term recession. ?Possible slowdown? is one way he puts it. But dirty work is what Vice Presidents are for. So Dick Cheney has been sent out to say the forbidden word. As early as Dec. 3, he was on Meet the Press warning that the nation ?may well be on the front edge of a recession...
...Then again, he and Cheney are just enlarging on what everybody is already thinking?that even if we can avoid a real recession, meaning two consecutive quarters in which the economy shrinks, a slowdown in the rapid growth of the ?90s is plainly in store. The dwindling nasdaq says it all. If those sputtering dotcoms are the economic engines of the future, then the future?s just not what it used...
...Greenspan has left Bush a handy platform in the meantime. A growing chorus of economists think Greenspan's last half-point hike in May was overkill, and that the slowdown is indeed happening too fast. The markets are demanding a full point of interest rate cuts from the Fed chairman in the next six months, and many expect him to begin with a surprise, pre-FOMC-meeting cut in the next few weeks, coming perhaps as soon as the next unemployment figures, due out in early January. That would only help Bush set a properly gloomy mood...
...description, Greenspan's main obsession is fighting inflation.) But Greenspan is fully aware that this business cycle, even in its current flattened form, is closer to the trough than the apex, and that's largely his doing. Tax cuts may not be the answer to the slowdown, but they probably wouldn't hurt...
...Greeenspan finds himself making emergency rate-cuts this winter to soften the slowdown that he himself started, it may be hard for him to deny an incoming Republican president his pet project, as long as Bush is both sensible and polite about it. After putting Clinton (and himself) in the Fiscal Policy Hall of Fame, though, he's not going to rubber-stamp a tax cut because George Bush's son asks him to, even if young George sends mutual friends to do the asking. Greenspan has a legacy of his own to worry about...