9/30/2004

Economic Improvement Due to Election?

An article written in BusinessWeek discusses improvement in the economy from the second quarter of the year. At the beginning of the year, I believe most Americans were occupied with the events that were taking place oversea's, which would have an impact on any economy. It mentions that many consumer's were impacted by the affects of increased gas prices. The sudden growth in the third quarter make many believe that it will continue to grow, or will it? Is this just the affects the Presidential election? Many have turned their attention to the election and I believe are influenced by promises that each candidate may have given if elected. These promises about continued economic growth may influece the consumer to believe it is growing and will continue to grow, and thus persuading to buy more. It will be interesting to see where we stand as an economy in the early part of 2005.

4 comments:

Ernie said...

I certainly believe that the economy will strengthen, no matter the outcome, after the elections are behind us. The country is divided right now into either one of two places. On the one side you have the Kerry camp and on the other the Bush team. The country is spending much time and many resources into looking at the past instead of doing what is right, which would be to look to the future. The future will not be looked at with candidates blaming eachother for past mistakes or lack of armed service duties. We need a candidate to step forth and tell the country what we can expect without all of this b.s. about the other candidate's past.

Dr. Tufte said...

-2 on Jake's post, for a link to a magazine but not to the article, for two misuses of affects instead of effects, a missing "of", and others.

So, can strong economic growth continue? The index of leading indicators has been saying for a few months that there is trouble coming this winter and spring.

However, there is considerable electoral uncertainty (at the time of the post), and that can contribute to a faltering economy. So perhaps after the election, things will firm up a bit. It is pretty easy to imagine managers putting things on hold to wait and see what the post-electoral business climate is going to look like.

CMC said...

Dr. Tufte said electoral uncertainty is rarely enough to suspend managerial decisions because of business climate. While at the time of the post this was true, it seems the election turnout for this year (2008) might yield some serious changes to the business environment, especially in this housing and credit crunch. In extreme cases, elections can affect the direction of the economy.

Dr. Tufte said...

Trinity: elections are still overrated.