Here is the truth.
On the economy, the facts are these. When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course.
But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion.
All these decisions deserve scrutiny. And in retrospect, they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama’s big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn’t.
Link to Part 31.
3 comments:
And he has accomplished this with republicans fighting him all the way.
Your graph is prettier.
"No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment."
Agreed, but it makes me wonder:
If Bush is responsible for "the next 12 months" after Obama's inauguration, then is Bush responsible for the improvement clearly visible in all of 2009? ??
Just a thought...
From the data in your link
2009-01-01 -820
2009-02-01 -726
2009-03-01 -796
2009-04-01 -660
2009-05-01 -386
2009-06-01 -502
2009-07-01 -300
2009-08-01 -231
2009-09-01 -236
2009-10-01 -221
2009-11-01 -55
2009-12-01 -130
2010 was less than stellar, too.
Not a positive number to be seen. Sure, I'll give Bush credit for that.
FWIW, GDP bottomed in Q2, '09.
Cheers!
JzB
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