According to rushlimbaugh.com:
There's a piece in the American Thinker today -- might have been yesterday -- that said the Obama administration really ought to fear the misery index. The misery index was the thing that did Carter in, in addition to Carter himself. The misery index calculates unemployment, interest rates, and one other number, I forget what it is right off the bat, but interest rates are artificially low right now from bank to bank or institution to institution. But your credit card interest rate's not, and if you go borrow money for a house that's not zero like the banks are paying each other. Those interest rates are real. The unemployment rate, 17%, actually ten-and-a-half percent if you factor the almost one million people who have given up trying to find a job, one million people. They're not counted in the unemployment numbers. But it's known how many there are because they don't have jobs and they're no longer filing unemployment claims, have either expired or they're not looking for work or what have you. They're totally dispirited.
And, remember, now, these people all thought that George Bush had done this and that was it going to be fixed immediately. We were going to have an America like we had never had before. We were going to be led by this charismatic figure, the world was going to love us, there weren't going to be terrorist attacks anymore. The only reason there were terrorist attacks is the world hated George W. Bush. All of these lies that perpetuated for eight months slowly and surely are being shown to be just that, because liberalism is what it is: it is destructive; it is damaging, and it itself is lies, a series of lies, or it's one giant lie.
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Misery Index: The Misery Index is the sum of a nation’s unemployment, interest rates, and inflation figures.
The misery index now stands at 12.8%, the highest since 1991 and 3 points above its average since then.
Whichever methodology you use, the misery metric will likely have political implications near-term… U.S. President Barack Obama faces his first midterm congressional elections in November. Their opposition will surely seek to capitalize on voter discomfort with the economy.
That's what happened in 1976 when Jimmy Carter exploited a misery index of around 13% to help defeat Gerald Ford for the Presidency—only to see it rise to more than 20% four years later, costing him the same job. So unless they can cut their current indices, lawmakers could suffer their own form of misery this year: lost elections.
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Oh. . . .I thought that the "Misery" Index was how the American people feel about this President and Congress, but then again it would be much higher than 12.8% if that was the case. . . . :) :)
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/the_number_democrats_should_fe.html
