Try teh Google, Dick

With Ollie North providing us such a great perspective on our country's foreign affairs (see the post below), who could be better to help us understand our current economic situation than Dick "toeman" Morris?

Here are some of his extremely informative comments:

The failure of Obamanomics
The data is in for April. Here's what happened:
1. Household personal income (inflation adjusted) rose...."

What a disaster! Obama, you've been pwned!

"but every penny -- and then some -- went into savings or paying down debts."

How dare those ordinary people pay down their debts! That will sure teach Obama a lesson.

"2. Meanwhile, to pay for this stimulus spending that didn't stimulate, Obama had to borrow so much money that long-term interest rates have almost doubled since he took office, forcing postponement or abandonment of business expansion and hiring across the board."

Let's take a little look at this last claim, as Mr. Morris doesn't see fit to provide any evidence to support it.

If, by "long-term interest rates," Mr. Morris means daily Treasury long term rates, here is what I found:

20 year rates hit a high of 5.34% on 6/22/07. For most of the next 14 months or so, they hovered in the 4 to 5% range, declining to 4.12% on 9/16/08. At that point, with the Bush Depression staring everyone in the face, they began a precipitous collapse, reaching 2.88% on 12/30/08.

On Obama's inauguration day, they had recovered to 4.30%. Today, they stand at 4.64%.

By my calculations, that represents an increase of just under 8%, not the 100% that Mr. Morris alleges. I just want to point out here that I found this information in less than one minute by googling "long term interest rates." It wasn't that hard. Now, more to the point, I want to point out that, by the standards of the last few years, excepting the period from last September to last January, these numbers are well within historic norms. The low interest rates of that exceptional period were a result of the total collapse of faith in the Bush administration's ability to control the economy, and went away as soon as the economic community was convinced that Obama would return the country to some semblance of fiscal responsibility.

So, Dick, you are a big fat liar. What a surprise.