Posted on 06/03/2019 2:08:57 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Democratic Party candidates for President in 2020 have been claiming that Trump’s economic successes are really the result of Obama administration policies.
A while back, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis created a summary report that measured the American economy while President Obama and the Democrats were in control.
It’s a trip down memory lane, and shows that Democrat claims about the “Obama Economy” are nothing but smoke and mirrors designed to fool the American people.
While Democrats were in charge everything that should have been up, is down, and everything that should have been down, is up. Take a look at this:
Meanwhile Reuters reports that the economy under President Trump is booming and workers are reaping the benefits.
Three quarters of Americans surveyed by the Federal Reserve last year said they were living comfortably or doing OK in 2018, roughly unchanged from the year before but continuing a six-year trend that has reflected the ongoing economic recovery and falling unemployment, the Fed reported on Thursday.
“This generally positive assessment of economic well-being is consistent with the continued economic expansion and the low national unemployment rate,” the Fed said, noting the steady upward trend in the survey results since 2013, the first year it was conducted. At that point just 62% of households felt they were OK or living comfortably.
The change over last year, however, was not considered statistically significant, evidence that a round of tax cuts, wage hikes and strong 2018 growth had not registered deeply in household sentiment that may have plateaued.
The central bank’s latest Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking also pointed to some continuing gaps in the recovery.
Around 12% of respondents still said they could not cover an unexpected $400 expense, similar to last year, and 30% reported they were “either unable to pay their bills or are one modest financial setback away from hardship.”
That was a decline from 33% in the year before, but still evidence of financial fragility.
In addition, “another year of economic expansion and the low national unemployment rates did little to narrow the persistent economic disparities by race, education, and geography,” the Fed reported.
Among those without a high school degree, around 68% of whites still reported doing at least OK, compared to 61% of blacks and 58% of Hispanics. For each race, the number was about 20 percentage points higher among those with a college degree, with nearly 90% of college-educated whites saying they were financially alright.
The online survey, covering 11,440 adults in October and November and weighted to be nationally representative, captured the mood of households across a broad set of issues as the U.S. economic recovery approached the decade mark.
Its 19 sections included questions not just about income and employment but neighborhood satisfaction and the prevalence of gig work. The survey found 30% of respondents had done some sort of temporary work over the year – including things like dog walking alongside tasks like driving for a ridesharing company – and were slightly more likely to have trouble meeting emergency expenses.
Surprisingly, at a time when housing costs in “superstar” cities like San Francisco have become a focus of discussion, the survey found that even those with lower incomes for those cities reported being more satisfied with their housing and neighborhoods than those in less-expensive places.
“Adults with relatively low income for their city are slightly more satisfied with their housing and neighborhoods in more expensive cities,” the Fed concluded, a finding that may counter theories that high housing costs are dissuading people from moving to those places.
Totally agree. It’s directionally helpful and maybe I’m just being too critical but it seems like it would have been so easy to make their “one glance” graphic convincing with just a bit of legwork.
Obama followed in the tradition of FDR. He inherited a recession. And extended it.
The Depression you never heard of,
as handled by the president history
loves to dump on.
The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover — falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics — urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored.
Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.
https://mises.org/library/forgotten-depression-1920
In 1922, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and it was only 2.4 percent by 1923.
Nice post... thanks.
After searching, I found this at WND: Obama's latest fraud: 'Economic recovery' disproven in just 9 charts Read more at https://www.wnd.com/2016/03/obamas-economic-recovery-in-just-9-charts/, 03/21/2016:
"This article is an update of a report published by Rachel Stoltzfoos, “Obama’s Economy in 9 Charts,” in the Daily Caller on Oct. 30, 2015. In September 2015, ZeroHedge.com introduced the concept of selecting nine charts to describe the Obama economy from the dozens of charts produced and updated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis."
A few rebuttals:
Why you can’t sum up Obama in 9 charts, Aug 4, 2016.
Obama Years Explained in Nine Charts-Truth! & Fiction!. August 31, 2016
Trump, Obama, and the Misleading Charts, Oct 5, 2016.
The source of these charts is the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Economic Research division.
Obama has a real skill for political black magic. No one President let problems get worse, found ways to make things worse in ways no one had considered before, and get away with it quite like he did.
And the narrative of the article doesn’t agree with the headline - “continuing a six year trend...of ongoing economic recovery and falling unemployment”, “steady upward trend since 2013”, “change over last year not considered statistically significant . I guess they thought no one would read the article.
The hockey stick graphs are impressive. Too bad we can’t read the axes of the charts to be able to see what’s being measured and in what time periods.
I notice this was an on-line survey as well.
I’d like to believe this story is true, but I am skeptical that the charts were created to fit the narrative.
“Obama has a real skill for political black magic. No one President let problems get worse, found ways to make things worse in ways no one had considered before, and get away with it quite like he did.”
Well said!
He had one all-powerful race card, that’s for sure! And a bunch of Quisling RINOs scared of their own shadows. And a complicit Enemy Media. A Perfect Storm, by any measure.
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