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The Lie?  On the October 6th, 2011 edition of Hannity, host Sean Hannity made the false statement that President Ronald Reagan, “inherited a far worse economy than (President) Obama.” |
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The Truth  This is one of the kinds of Fox News Lies that have become commonplace. Hannity knows that Reagan did NOT inherit a worse economy than Obama, but he allows the lie to slip through his lips as if it is a foregone conclusion. According to a report published at IHS Global Insight on July 29th, 2011, “The fourth quarter of 2008, right after the Lehman failure, now shows an 8.9% annual rate of decline in GDP (previously 6.8%), and now represents the worst single-quarter decline in GDP since the 10.4% drop in the first quarter of 1958, exceeding the 7.9% decline in the second quarter of 1980.”Also, on the same day, McClatchy Newspapers reported that, “The quarterly percentage change in real gross domestic product was revised down for six of the 12 quarters reviewed. That means the Great Recession, already the worst downturn since the 1930s, was even more damaging than previously recognized.” (source: mediamatters.org) |
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You don’t sit around and whine about your predecessor??? Ralph Reed, one of Obama’s greatest failing is NOT PUTTING BUSH AND DICK BEHIND BARS for their crimes against humanity.
I suspect that Hannity was referring to the Misery Index economic indicator (inflation rate added to unemployment rate):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_index_%28economics%29
Going by the Misery Index, yes, Reagan inherited the worst economy of any modern President. At the end of Carter’s term, the Misery Index sat at 19.72; the worst it ever got under eight years of GW Bush was 11.47. In fact, Ford and Carter served their entire presidencies with a worse Misery Index than the worst it ever got under Bush Sr., Clinton, or GW Bush combined. It’s becoming easy to forget how bad it was from about 1974 to 1982, but for those of us who lived through it, we won’t forget.
If Hannity were trying to imply that the bad economy of 1980 was Carter’s fault, or that Reagan single-handedly solved the bad economy… Well, both of those are arguably wrong, but Hannity didn’t go there. The economic problems of 1974 through 1982 were probably more directly caused by OPEC oil policy than anything that Carter did. And the US recovery was largely engineered during Reagan’s term, but by a Carter appointee, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.
It would be more difficult to find a “true” statement made by Hannity.
And by the way, Wikipedia is a conservative site where anyone can make changes to an article. Using Wikipedia as a source is considered unreliable and lazy.