Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Jan 4, 2009 at 8:02 AM Pacific

The Bush Recession In His Own Words

Get out your popcorn for more of Bush talking about the economy (and denying his recession) than you ever hoped to see (also posted at Daily Kos):

On December 1, the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what had become obvious to most economic observers earlier this year: the United States has been in a recession since late 2007.

The most remarkable feature of this recession - which should be forever remembered as the Bush Recession (I first heard the term from Kossack barath) -- may be George W. Bush's steadfast refusal to accept its existence.

For almost the entire year, Bush denied that we were in a recession, saying that our economic problem was merely one of "slow growth" -- slower than he would like, he said, but growth nonetheless.

But now, despite Bush's denials, we know conclusively what has been fairly obvious all along: we're 13 months into what is already the second-longest recession since the Great Depression. (There were two recessions of 16 months, the most recent in 1981 and 1982.)

In the video above, I assemble clips of Bush on the topic of the economy from January through December of last year, capturing his head-in-sand approach.

It's not exactly "Frost/Nixon," but it is important to assemble the evidence of Bush's error-ridden presidency so that we can learn from the disaster that was his term in office, and never again offer such massive powers to such an incompetent fool.

The Bush Recession In His Own Words

Get out your popcorn for more of Bush talking about the economy (and denying his recession) than you ever hoped to see (also posted at Daily Kos):

On December 1, the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what had become obvious to most economic observers earlier this year: the United States has been in a recession since late 2007.

The most remarkable feature of this recession - which should be forever remembered as the Bush Recession (I first heard the term from Kossack barath) -- may be George W. Bush's steadfast refusal to accept its existence.

For almost the entire year, Bush denied that we were in a recession, saying that our economic problem was merely one of "slow growth" -- slower than he would like, he said, but growth nonetheless.

But now, despite Bush's denials, we know conclusively what has been fairly obvious all along: we're 13 months into what is already the second-longest recession since the Great Depression. (There were two recessions of 16 months, the most recent in 1981 and 1982.)

In the video above, I assemble clips of Bush on the topic of the economy from January through December of last year, capturing his head-in-sand approach.

It's not exactly "Frost/Nixon," but it is important to assemble the evidence of Bush's error-ridden presidency so that we can learn from the disaster that was his term in office, and never again offer such massive powers to such an incompetent fool.

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