Obama's Economic Legacy

[nailer]

Road infrastructure programs have a ready made user tax. We need to piggyback a Federal gas/diesel tax onto it.

IIRC our infrastructure has always needed far more maintenance than the taxpayer is willing to fund.

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Here's a thoughtful and interesting piece on Obama's economic legacy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/ma...ic-legacy.html

His economy has certainly come further than most people recognize. The private sector has added jobs for 73 consecutive months — some 14.4 million new jobs in all — the longest period of sustained job growth on record. Unemployment, which peaked at 10 percent the year Obama took office, the highest it had been since 1983, under Ronald Reagan, is now 5 percent, lower than when Reagan left office. The budget deficit has fallen by roughly $1 trillion during his two terms. And overall U.S. economic growth has significantly outpaced that of every other advanced nation.

Compared to the snake oil of the GOP's discredited supply-side foolishness and their resistance to anything that would help the country out of the recession, Obama's stewardship of the economy has been pretty impressive.

Well, its certainly a nice rosey write-up by the NY Times. I guess somehow "achieving" an unemployment level of 5% is a good thing. Of course, that also means that Obama has presided over one of the lowest economic growth rates in history (You really wanna cure unemployment? Ramp up GDP).

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/arti...th_101987.html

On Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that 2015 U.S. real GDP (RGDP) growth was 2.38%. No matter what revisions are subsequently made, 2015 will have been the tenth year in a row that RGDP growth came in at under 3.0%. The longest previous such run in U.S. economic history was only four years, and the last time that this happened was during the Great Depression (1930 - 1933).

Also:

Right now, the nation is probably already in a recession. The BEA's first estimate of 4Q2015 RGDP growth was only 0.69%, and there is mounting evidence that this will later be revised downward. However, making the wildly optimistic assumption that 2016 RGDP growth will come in at the CBO's current forecast (2.67%), Obama will be the only U.S. president in history that did not deliver a single year of 3.0%+ economic growth.

The linked article was posted in Feb 2016. We just learned that 2016 Q1 GDP came in at 0.5%:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/28/us-ad...-2016-gdp.html

In fact, I think the lack of economic growth and moribund economy is one of the big things fueling the high interest level in this upcoming election particularly for Sanders and Trump supporters.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

Well, its certainly a nice rosey write-up by the NY Times. I guess somehow "achieving" an unemployment level of 5% is a good thing. Of course, that also means that Obama has presided over one of the lowest economic growth rates in history (You really wanna cure unemployment? Ramp up GDP).

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/arti...th_101987.html

On Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that 2015 U.S. real GDP (RGDP) growth was 2.38%. No matter what revisions are subsequently made, 2015 will have been the tenth year in a row that RGDP growth came in at under 3.0%. The longest previous such run in U.S. economic history was only four years, and the last time that this happened was during the Great Depression (1930 - 1933).

Funny how that works. The recent recession was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Can you imagine how phucked up things would be if McCain/Palin had been elected (McCain had denied anything bad was happening in the midst of the crash).

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Funny how that works. The recent recession was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Can you imagine how phucked up things would be if McCain/Palin had been elected (McCain had denied anything bad was happening in the midst of the crash).

I guess we'll never know, but feel free to continue to indulge your imagination.

[noonereal]

Originally Posted by whell

I guess we'll never know, but feel free to continue to indulge your imagination.

was it not congress who told Obie to forget about the second part of his stimulus plan after the 08 collapse?

Would that have further helped?

if you are unhappy with the bounce, should you not have supported it? Were you wrong then? The GOP wrong then?

[whell]

Originally Posted by noonereal

was it not congress who told Obie to forget about the second part of his stimulus plan after the 08 collapse?

Would that have further helped?

if you are unhappy with the bounce, should you not have supported it? Were you wrong then? The GOP wrong then?

We'll never know. But I do thank Finn for posting this article. It does counter many of the "talk tracks" that have festered here in this forum and elsewhere.

Here are just two that I can think of:

"Obama wanted a bigger stimulus plan but the Republicans (the "party of No" stopped him."

From the article: "But Democrats, led by the “deficit hawk” wing of the party, also fought against anything too ambitious, and Obama, still in the first month of his presidency, was left in the position of negotiating with his own party, such that he was just barely able to get the $800 billion on a straight party-line vote."

The article also goes on to say that Obama might have gone for a second stimulus, but since he perceived he had limited time before the midterms and wanted to also get health care reform passed, he traded another stimulus for the PPACA.

Here's another: President Bush gave us "TARP" and "too big to fail". Yet, here's how Obama tells it:

"Many within Bush’s own party were supporting an alternative bill that was focused on mortgage-****asset insurance and tax cuts. But Obama, convinced that anything short of a major bailout could lead to economic catastrophe, said Democrats should back Paulson’s plan. They did." Of course, Paulson's plan was what became known as TARP.