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Barack Obama's Sad Record on Economic Growth


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  • Platinum Contributing Member

Progressives like Hillary and Obama want to grow govt.   I don't think anyone here would argue that.  Problem is in order for govt to grow the economy does too.  Sad the left cannot see this.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2016/02/01/barack_obamas_sad_record_on_economic_growth_101987.html

February 1, 2016
Barack Obama's Sad Record on Economic Growth
By Louis Woodhill
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).

Even worse, and this should be the defining issue of the 2016 elections, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is now forecasting that America will never see 3.0% economic growth again. This should be drawing howls of protest, at least from Republicans, but there has been little reaction thus far.


From 1790 to 2000, U.S. RGDP growth averaged 3.79%. America needs at least 3.0% economic growth-the nation cannot defend itself and pay its bills without it. However, America's elites have largely given up on growth, and are now distracting themselves with academic musings about "secular stagnation."

Hillary Clinton is trying to position herself as the logical heir to President Obama's "legacy." Hillary is asking the voters to give her the job of protecting and continue Obama's "achievements." In a way, what Hillary is trying to do is odd, but in another way, it isn't. Here's why.

The rate of real economic growth is the single greatest determinate of both America's strength as a nation and the wellbeing of the American people. And, Obama's record in this area has been truly dismal.

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.

Again, assuming 2.67% RGDP growth for 2016, Obama will leave office having produced an average of 1.55% growth. This would place his presidency fourth from the bottom of the list of 39*, above only those of Herbert Hoover (-5.65%), Andrew Johnson (-0.70%) and Theodore Roosevelt (1.41%)

No matter what happens in 2016, Obama's record on economic growth will be considerably worse than that of the much-maligned George W. Bush. Bush 43 delivered RGDP growth averaging 2.10%, with two years (2004 and 2005) above 3.0%.

By the way, the economic growth superstar among all U.S. presidents was none other than Rutherford B. Hayes (1877 - 1880). Hayes delivered an average of 7.71% RGDP growth, and none of his four years in office was below 3.0%.

So, it seems a bit surprising that Hillary Clinton would be running for president by promising the nation the equivalent of a third Obama term. However, in another way, it isn't.

Hillary is a progressive. Progressives believe in "progressively" expanding the size, power, and reach of government. And, Obama has done more to further the progressive cause of anyone since FDR. So, yes, in that sense, it is completely authentic for Hillary to be promising "more Obama" if she wins.

With respect to the economy, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are offering what amounts to "hospice care." Their "tax the rich" redistributionist proposals are not intended to restore strong growth. They are designed to make the middle class more comfortable in the face of economic stagnation. "Hey, you may be unemployed after you graduate, but at least college was free!"

The only way that the voters will elect a Democrat as president in the fall is if the Republicans nominate someone that seems crazy and dangerous, or if they run on budget-cutting "austerity." If confronted with a choice between hospice care and "surgery without anesthesia," the electorate will opt for the hospice care, and try to survive until the next election.

As the implications of the CBO's latest projections sink in, Republican candidates will hear the political Sirens singing songs about the need to "cut entitlements." If Republicans offer a credible program to restore rapid economic growth, they will win. If they offer austerity, they will lose-and, they will deserve to lose.

*There have been 44 presidents, but only 39 presidencies. Some terms were shared by two people, as a result of death or resignation.

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Another article.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/01/06/the-obama-recovery-has-been-weakest-ever-should-have-been-strongest/aOpf5ZO3ToyQlBUl1mb5pI/story.html

 

“Our middle class is shrinking,” one candidate warned during a debate. “Our poor families are becoming poorer, and 70 percent of us are earning the same or less than we were 12 years ago. We need new leadership.”

Another candidate scorned the administration’s happy talk about unemployment falling to just over 5 percent. “What they forgot to tell you,” he told an audience, “is that statistic doesn’t include those people who have given up looking for work, those people who are working part time. Add it all together and real unemployment is over 10 percent.”

Politics being what it is, nobody is surprised when Republicans harshly judge Obama’s handling of the economy. But wait — those quotes come from Democrats. That was former governor Martin O’Malley lamenting that wages haven’t improved in 12 years. It was Senator Bernie Sanders pointing out how bad the jobless numbers really are. With the exception of Hillary Clinton, who told the Globe that she would give Obama an “A” for “saving our economy,” candidates across the spectrum have acknowledged how threadbare this recovery has been.

 

The Great Recession formally ended in June 2009, just five months after Obama’s inauguration. Nevertheless, polls repeatedly find that large swaths of voters believe the US economy is still suffering from recession. They may be wrong on the technical definition. But they aren’t nearly as wrong on the essence of the matter as the president, who insists the economy is coming up roses.

“The economy, by every metric, is better than when I came into office,” Obama told Jon Stewart during his last appearance on “The Daily Show.” Even PolitiFact, which no one has ever accused of leaning Republican, rated that whopper “Mostly False.”

In truth, a depressing array of “metrics” shows an economy that has yet to get back on its feet, notwithstanding the unprecedented sums spent by Washington in the form of “stimulus,” bailouts, and gargantuan budget deficits.

Six million more Americans live in poverty today than when Obama was elected. Median household income (in real dollars) was no higher at the end of 2015 than at the end of 2007. The labor force participation rate — the share of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one — has sunk to 62.5 percent, a level not seen since the Carter administration. Since the recession ended, the economy has grown at an annual rate of just 2.2 percent. That is way below average for post-recession recoveries. Indeed, this has been theweakest recovery in modern times.

It should have been one of the strongest.

In America, the historical pattern has always been that the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery that follows. After a severe recession like the one Obama inherited, the economy should have come roaring back faster than usual, and quickly regained what had been lost. This isn’t after-the-fact wisdom: It is what the administration itself predicted at the time. Far from anticipating the limping slog of the last seven years, the White House confidently forecast an economic recovery that would feature robust GDP growth of 4 percent or more. It never came close.

More Americans would be working, paychecks would be larger, and public confidence would be sturdier if the economy had bounced back as vigorously as expected. Obama thought he had a better way to fix a recession. Turns out he had a worse way. Live and learn, voters.

 
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Another.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/06/02/economically-could-obama-be-americas-worst-president/#4b0eb2ff30f5

The recession ended four years ago, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.  So Obamanomics has had plenty of time to produce a solid recovery.  In fact, since the American historical record is the worse the recession, the stronger the recovery, Obama should have had an easy time producing a booming recovery by now.

Obama likes to tout that we are doing better now than at the worst of the recession.  But every recovery is better than the recession, by definition.  So that doesn’t mean much.

The right measure and comparison for Obama’s record is not to compare the recovery to the recession, but to compare Obama’s recovery with other recoveries from other recessions since the Great Depression.  By that measure, what is clear is that Obamanomics has produced the worstrecovery from a recession since the Great Depression, worse than what every other President who has faced a recession has achieved since the Great Depression.

In the 10 previous recessions since the Great Depression, prior to this last recession, the economy recovered all jobs lost during the recession after an average of 25 months after the prior jobs peak (when the recession began), according to the records kept by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.  So the job effects of prior post Depression recessions have lasted an average of about 2 years.  But under President Obama, by April, 2013, 64 months after the prior jobs peak, almost 5½ years, we still have not recovered all of the recession’s job losses.  In April, 2013, there were an estimated 135.474 million American workers employed, still down about 2.6 million jobs from the prior peak of 138.056 million in January, 2008.

Ronald Reagan suffered a severe recession starting in 1981, which resulted from the monetary policy that broke the back of the roaring 1970s inflation.  But all the job losses of that recession were recovered after 28 months, with the recovery fueled by traditional pro-growth policies.  By this point in the Reagan recovery, 64 months after the recession started, jobs had grown 9.5% higher than where they were when the recession started, representing an increase of about 10 million more jobs.  By contrast, in April, 2013, jobs in the Obama recovery were still about 2% below where they were when the recession started, about 2 ½ million less, or a shortfall of about 10 million jobs if you count population growth since the recession started, as discussed below.

Obama’s so-called recovery included the longest period since the Great Depression with unemployment above 8%, 43 months, from February, 2009, when Obama’s so-called stimulus costing nearly $1 trillion was passed, until August, 2012.  It also included the longest period since the Great Depression with unemployment at 9.0% or above, 30 months, from April, 2009, until September, 2011.  In fact, during the entire 65 years from January, 1948 to January, 2013, there were no months with unemployment over 8%, except for 26 months during the bitter 1981 – 1982 recession, which slayed the historic inflation of the 1970s.  That is how inconsistent with the prior history of the American economy President Obama’s extended unemployment has been.  That is some fundamental transformation of America.

Moreover, that U3 unemployment rate does not count the millions who have dropped out of the labor force during the recession and President Obama’s worst recovery since the Great Depression, who are not counted as unemployed because they are not considered in the work force.  Even though the employment age population has increased by 12 million since the recession began, only 1 million more Americans are counted as in the labor force.  With normal labor force participation rates, that implies another 7.3 million missing U.S. jobs, on top of the 2 ½ million missing jobs we are still short from when the recession began, for a total of about 10 million missing jobs.

If America enjoyed the same labor force participation rate as in 2008, the unemployment rate in December, 2012 would have been about 11%, compared to the monthly low of 4.4% in December, 2007, under President George Bush and his “failed” economic policies of the past.  We will not see 4.4% unemployment again, without another fundamental transformation of America’s economic policies.

The number of unemployed in January, 2013, at the end of President Obama’s first term, was 7.7 million.  Another 7.9 million were “employed part time for economic reasons.”  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports, “These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.”

Another 2.3 million were “marginally attached to the work force.”  The BLS reports, “These individuals…wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.  [But] [t]hey were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.”

That puts the total army of the unemployed or underemployed at nearly 18 million Americans in January, 2013.  They are all counted in the BLS calculation of the U6 unemployment rate, which still totaled 13.9% that month.

But the Shadow Government Statistics website also includes in its “SGS Alternative Unemployment Rate” long term discouraged workers, those who wanted and were available for work for more than a year, and had looked for a job, but not in the prior 4 weeks.  That is how the BLS U6 unemployment rate was calculated prior to the changes made in the early 1990s under the Clinton Administration.  Including these workers as well raises the SGS unemployment rate for April, 2013 to 23%.  That seems more consistent with how the economy still feels for the majority of Americans, despite Democrat Party controlled media cheerleading.

This utterly failed jobs record of Obamanomics reflects the more basic reality that the economy has not been growing under President Obama.  In the 10 post depression recessions before President Obama, the economy recovered the lost GDP during the recession within an average of 4.5 quarters after the recession started.  But it took Obama’s recovery 16 quarters, or 4 years, to reach that point.  Today, 21 quarters, or 5 plus years, after the recession started, the economy (real GDP) has grown just 3.2% above where it was when the recession started.  By sharp contrast, at this point in the Reagan recovery, the economy had boomed by 18.6%, almost one fifth.

Obama’s economic performance has even been much worse than Bush’s.  Jeffrey H. Anderson, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, writes in Investors Business Daily on January 13, “Prior to Obama, the second term of President Bush featured the weakest gains in the gross domestic product in some time, with average annual (inflation-adjusted) GDP growth of just 1.9%, [according to the official stats at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)]”  But average annual real GDP growth during Obama’s entire first term was less than half as much at a pitiful 0.8%, according to the same official source.

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  • Platinum Contributing Member
Just now, Anler said:

Thank House republicans for stalling everything to make Obama look bad.

Like what regarding economic policy?  Give some specific examples.  

You seem to forget the dems held all the power for the 1st 2 years he was in office.  

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1 minute ago, Anler said:

We should be 4 years ahead of where we are now. If they didnt spend the whole first term trying to sabotage everything we would be.

:lmao:Dems held both the house and senate in his first 2 years.  

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22 minutes ago, Mainecat said:

Jesus fuckin Ke Rist after the biggest recession since the depression and the growth has only been 3%

 

Your really grasping....really grasping

Grasping? :lmao:We had better growth after the DEPRESSION!   What's your Obama excuse now going to be?

Hell MC even your guy Bernie has admitted many parts of the economy are not good.  :nuts:

http://nypost.com/2015/09/17/bernie-sanders-is-making-the-republican-case-against-the-obama-economy/

 

Edited by Highmark
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15 minutes ago, Momorider said:

And then Analer with the standard Leftard talking lie :guzzle: 

They controlled congress half the 1st term and all they got done was Obamacare and it was bad for the economy. 

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3 hours ago, Highmark said:

They controlled congress half the 1st term and all they got done was Obamacare and it was bad for the economy. 

Barry is the most devicive CUNT in the history of devicive CUNTS, this clown has never once reached out to congress in an attempt to compromise, the FUCK won't even negotiate with DemonCUNTS, get fucking real :guzzle: 

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4 hours ago, Highmark said:

:lmao:Dems held both the house and senate in his first 2 years.  

So what. They jumped up and down over everything and filibustered everything they could. The economy was like a fucking roller coaster with the way they were threatening to shut down the govt and all of that shit. It wasnt until 2013 when everything started to normalize and then we have been off to the races ever since. Our business is directly tied to the health of the economy. when they start playing their games it affects us first because the first thing to get cut or put on hold is capital projects.

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32 minutes ago, Ebsell said:

It's amazing it's that good. GWB was as low as -92% in his last years. He fucked the economy more than any President in history. 

 

http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year

:lmao: it was Clintoon deregulation, it has nothing to do with Bush :guzzle: No mater how much you Leftards spew that lie 

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8 hours ago, Mainecat said:

Jesus fuckin Ke Rist after the biggest recession since the depression and the growth has only been 3%

 

Your really grasping....really grasping

I will say it wouldnt matter who was in office. My biggest issue with Obama is the debt he added. It's clear to me all political hacks republican or democrat could care less about fixing our country. 

 

1. Secure our boarder. Cheap labor lowers salaries. Plus unemployed people add to our debt

2. End 90% of the government regulation that kills our industry. Make it possible to compete with China Mexico and India. 

3. The United States should have the lowest business taxes for any company large or small in the world. 

4. Shrink government 

5. Create a balanced budget amendment 

6. Go back to the constitution. The government must follow checks and balances. The president isn't a king. No more executive orders that override congress. No more legislation from the Supreme Court or the White House. If the Supreme Court says it is unconstitutional it must be rewritten "see Obama care"

7. senate seats should go back to be being appointed. Obamacare would have never passed if this was the case

8. The American people must wake up the the division that is perpetrated by politicians and media outlets. We must unite as one to save our country.    

 

 

 

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If the economy is doing so well under Obama and Democrats

Then WHY

Is the labor participation rate down?

Are there more people on food stamps?

Is the median income down?

Is home ownership down?

Did the US credit rating get downgraded?

 

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6 minutes ago, racer254 said:

If the economy is doing so well under Obama and Democrats

Then WHY

Is the labor participation rate down?

Are there more people on food stamps?

Is the median income down?

Is home ownership down?

Did the US credit rating get downgraded?

 

SR is oblivious to the facts, he only believes the lies found in his memes.

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