So much for the President's contention that this is the strongest economy in American history. Financial Times' Christopher Swann has the story:

Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times.

Inflation rose 3.1 per cent in the year to March but salaries climbed just 2.4 per cent, according to the Employment Cost Index. In the final three months of 2004, real wages fell by 0.9 per cent.

The last time salaries fell this steeply was at the start of 1991, when real wages declined by 1.1 per cent.

[...]

Even after last month's bumper gain in employment, there are 22,000 fewer private sector jobs than when the recession began in March 2001, a 0.02 per cent fall. At the same point in the recovery from the recession of the early 1990s, private sector employment was up 4.7 per cent.

It's time for Bush and his Republican allies to take some real action to shore up this economy. The trickle down, supply side economics of massive tax cuts for the wealthy has clearly not worked in the past four years, so perhaps it's time to move back to the era of Clintonomics: balanced budgets and a more progressive system of taxation. Remind me why we moved away from it in the first place...