Beth, no pieces to attack Romney with today?  The theory of economic performance under Democrat vs Republican presidents is just silly, because the sequence of events that preceeds a president's inauguration usually have a great deal to do with the results.  A far better predictor is the Super Bowl, and whether an AFC team or an NFC team wins.

Another campaign ad for Obama and Warren, barely disguised as a news article. Ms. Healy's goal is to make us forget the miserable economic conditions of the past four years and blindly vote for the taxers and spenders whose misguided actions have created this mess we're in. Mr Obama has added trillions to the national debt, causing a historic downgrade in the country's credit rating, while overseeing a jobless recovery that could pass for a recession.

No thanks, he's had his chance. Time to let a professional take over now. 

I've read a similar article many times before and they're all as inconclusive as the one prior.  The only point you've really argued, and only halfheartedly at that, is that there may be correlation between the president and market performance.  However, correlation does not prove causation, and even more so when you include no analysis whatsoever.  I'm not sure you've earned the right to say Democrats and Republicans have 'produced' anything. 

Beth: What is in it for you to write this baloney? Where have you been for the last four years? You cant blame the unemployment and stagnation on Bush forever!

As so often happens, when you present conservatives with facts, all they offer in reply is bluster.

Bill Clinton left a budget surplus and booming economy. George W. Bush squandered the first and trashed the second.  Obama built it back up.  This is a consistent pattern of good economic times under Democratic presidents and bad ones under Republican presidents.  

Beth: Plagiarizemuch?

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/09/06/bill-clinton-is-right-the-economy-really-does-do-better-under-democrats

Facts are pesky things.

I'm just not sure how a real "journalist" can write something like this; such an obvious piece of yellow journalism in support of the current administration.  First of, it's patently incorrect; the average inflation-adjusted GDP growth rate during the Reagan administration was around 5.5% per year (with a couple of years over 7%).  The same measure during the George W. Bush administration is around 4% (with a couple of years over 5.5%).

Also notable, the Carter years were particularly awful but don't look nearly as bad when you don't adjust the numbers for inflation, which averaged around 10% for those four years.

So, the editor or ombudsman of the Globe should take a little more active role in vetting these articles or just label them when they're "yellow" as this one obviously is.

The timing of Ms. Healy's report more aptly suggests ignorant rather than "yellow" journalism, as one reader would interpret it. The facts reported have long been well known. They were, for example, topics in several columns appearing in the NY Times over the past ten years by Prof. Paul Krugman of Princeton. The only Republican President in the last hundred years to buck the trend significantly was Coolidge, who was lucky enough to complete his final term before the fraud-fueled boom of the 1920s collapsed into the Great Depression.

This article is specious.  Of what relevance is Harry Truman and the post-WWII boom today?  The main point of this presidential campaign is that the policies of Obama, Pelosi and Reid have throttled our economic recovery.  It's time for a change.

It's well known that expansionist programs pursued by Democrats have helped the economy while austerity programs pursued by Republicans have created economic malaise. Obama's only problem is that he did not pursue policies that were expansionist enough so the recovery from Bush's economic crisis has been slow. His programs were enough to prevent Bush's economic crisis from turning into a depression, but not as much as one would like. This is exactly what economists predicted at the time. Most European governments have been pursuing the austerity programs recommended by the so called tea party. This has created a depression in many European countries, who are experiencing unemployment rates over 25%. Most of these problems in Europe are self-inflicted and the result of stupid economic policy, and many Republicans have advocated the same stupid policies here.

This article is GARBAGE. It has no basis in reality. I would expect to gain more from a first or second grader with a set of Crayolas.

I shared this article with my brother - a CFO. His reply:

In the early 1970's, Henry Ford II is reported to have said "We need to elect a Democrat so that we start to live like Republicans again."

I'm a little surprised no one has brough up Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box, which looks at this issue more extensively.  Here's a recent Forbes article on it : http://onforb.es/VQQkra.  The review in US News http://bit.ly/Nlai8P gives you a look at bar charts for 12 different statistics and the comments section includes a bit of back and forth with one of the authors.

Forbes published some information on this 8 years ago (and I don't think for the first time, but that's the oldest good match I could find online in reasonable amount of time).  http://onforb.es/bGd181  http://onforb.es/PSLKY9  http://onforb.es/bpr6BF  http://onforb.es/QjjXA2  Forbes, if you're not familiar with it, is hardly a left-leaning rag.  The research Forbes reported on in 2004 was updated in 2011 with similar results.  http://onforb.es/v2A1En

None of this is news to anybody who's paid attention over the years.  But here in Attention Deficit Nation, it seems to magically fall out of people's brains.