Charts aside, let’s look at Chris Matthew’s (is it THAT Chris Matthews? I don’t know ) claim in more detail...
Obama like FDR before him, was dealt a very bad hand on the economy. However, he largely followed the Roosevelt prescription of government activism.
Obama imposed more spending, hyper-regulation, and tax increases, while also threatening throughout his two terms to inflict even more tax hikes, regulations and spending.
The results of increased costs and uncertainty on the private sector were predictable, that is, fewer resources and diminished incentives for starting up, expanding and investing in businesses.
This article basically highlighted an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent in November, and served up assorted quotes from the Obama crowd which included the typical declaration from Obama circles that his policies saved us from another Great Depression.
But putting aside the spin and just looking at the numbers, it’s unmistakable that Obama is handing over a badly under-performing economy to his successor. Consider economic growth and employment.
Real annual GDP growth since the end of the recession in mid-2009 has grown at less than half the rate it should during periods of recovery and expansion (averaging a mere 2.1 percent during this recovery compared to the historic average of 4.3 percent).
If growth during this recovery had matched the historical average, GDP this year would approximately $2.5 trillion larger.
As for the recent drop in the unemployment rate, from 5.0 percent in September to 4.6 percent in November, it turns out that 78 percent of that reduction was due to people LEAVING the labor force altogether, rather than new jobs being created.
The media never talks about the LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE. If they highlighted this, it would tell us that Labor force participation and job creation have been WOEFUL.
Employment as a share of the population in November registered 59.7 percent. If this employment-population ratio registered a more typical level prevailing before the recession (for example, 63 percent), we’d have 8.3 million MORE people working today.
In the end, the additional costs and uncertainties courtesy of government policies under Obama have discouraged private investment and entrepreneurship (both also down markedly from where they should be), and resulted in less growth and diminished job creation.
Looking back at history, through costly, wrongheaded policymaking, Hoover in effect created a recession, and both he and FDR turned it into the Great Depression. Similarly, President Obama took a bad economy, turned it into a deeper recession, and generated one of the worst recoveries on record.
Given his dismal performance in office, in order to polish up his legacy, Obama will have to rely on his own delusional declarations, the work of his political spin-meisters, and the complicity or ignorance of some in the media. Let’s hope that historians look at the actual record.
Excellent points. It why Marxist-Leninist invented Politcal Correctness. When they could not make the facts fit the ideological dogma, they simply changed the facts to fit the dogma.