Is 2010 Like 1982?

On Friday, the government will revise the Q2 GDP numbers and I don’t think it will be very good. With a little over two months until election day, some folks are comparing this year’s contest to Ronald Reagan’s first mid-term election in 1982.
Here’s how the economy looked back then compared to today.
image974.png
The red line shows the GDP’s performance from March 1980 to December 1982. The blue is from March 2008 to June 2010.
The comparison isn’t very apt. You can see the economy actually recovered in 1981 before falling again in 1982. That probably hurt Reagan in 1982 but the later recovery certainly helped him in 1984.
This time, the economy slumped into 2009 and has so far had a very unimpressive recovery in 2010.

Posted by on August 25th, 2010 at 12:51 pm


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