As Obama is about to finish his presidency, I am going to look back at how he did. Today I am going to look at the economy. I do not believe that a president has a great deal of control over the economy. With globalization, what happens in the rest of the world has more influence on the pocket book of Americans than the president. But most Americans don't believe that. That is why Clinton beat Bush even though Bush had won a war. But if the economy is so important and Americans think that the president has great influence, then I don't see how the GOP can claim that they can do a better job than the Democrats. Clinton presided over prosperity with a budget surplus. Bush the second presided over a disastrous economy. Obama brought back stability and the economy is doing way better than 8 years ago with the stock market at an all time high after crashing in 2008. So it seems that Obama has done a great job.
The GOP will say that after any recession, there is bound to be a recovery and that this recovery is not that great and been slow in coming. A Bush advisor recently faulted Obama for the slow recovery. But this is from a guy who was part of the administration when the economy collapsed. How dare he make this argument? I personally don't fault Bush for the economy. I don't think his tax cut led to the down fall. But I don't see where you can argue that a tax cut is going to be the solution for our problems. If a manager led a team to last place, and then someone else led them to the middle of the standing, you can't argue that the first guy was a better manager. That makes no sense whatsoever.
There were very little choice when Obama took over. He had to save the big banks and GM. Those who argued against that are just wrong. If he did not do that and more banks, insurance companies and auto makers fail, we would be in dire strait today and Obama would have been blamed for it. So I think he did what he had to do and given that the U.S. economy has recovered better than those of Europe and Japan, I think he did well. Let's face it, most manufacturing jobs will not come back no matter what the president does. For those who want to drill more oil, mine more coal, you are wrong. Clean energy is the future and Obama tried to help that industry. There were mistakes made but to continue depend on the old industries will make our economy and environment worse in the future. Overall I give Obama an A for effort in economy and B for results.
Sunday, January 15, 2017
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No doubt that the GOP tried to sabotage Obama on most of his policies. It's hard to tell if the economy would have recovered quicker had Obama had more support. I agree to an extent that there isn't much the President can do about the economy, but I believe that he can help manipulate things in either direction. Even if they're token gestures like raising or lowering taxes. Getting into wars used to be a good way to boost the economy, but we were already engaged in a war when he took office.
ReplyDeleteI think the situation when he got in office was not your typical recession. Jobs were lost. It's similar to what happened in Michigan. Manufacturing jobs that were once the backbone of the economy were gone. People who relied on these jobs and pensions were hurt by this. Many have not recovered from it because they couldn't adapt to a new society. So I think that these people who were kind of left behind voted for Trump. I don't blame them. It's like the coal miners in Pennsylvania. So we will see if these jobs ever come back. They may rebound a bit, but there's no doubt in my mind that we need to build and expand our infrastructure on alternative fuel sources.
Michigan's economy rebounded a bit with the auto manufacturers getting saved. Of course, Ford didn't take any money but it did ride the coattails of the other companies. It helps that people were buying new cars again too. Whether that is cyclical or based on the economy, that's a debate. But we've seen that when the economy is good, cars get sold.
I don't know if helping the banks did much good in the long run. I don't think they learned their lesson. But at the time, it was needed to avoid a crash in the market. I would have liked to have seen more abusers fined and put in jail. But the bank lobby is too strong.
So I'd give Obama a B- to C+ on the economy as a whole. I don't know why giving him a grade on effort is needed. It's all based on the end result, right? I don't know if this last boost in the stock market is based on him or other outside forces, like Trump being elected or just him leaving office. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened to the economy had he been in office another year. Of course we don't have that luxury. But if I have to, I'll give him a B for effort.
-LBOAYM
The grade for effort is not base on whether he tried or not. Obviously any president would try to improve the economy. But the effort grade is based on his willing to listen to both sides and make reasonable, intelligent decisions. As you said the president can manipulate things in either direction. In Obama's case, he decided to not raise taxes in the beginning as some in the liberal side wanted to do. He bailed out the banks and GM, something ironically some people on both sides of the aisle were against. I would have done pretty much what he did so I gave him an A for studying the issues and made the calls. After the effort, the results then were not under his control. The recession could have been worse in Europe, some banks may have hidden more damage accounts than what was known, a Tsunami may have hit Japan (it did). So sometimes no matter what the president did, things may not turn out right. You mentioned war actually may help the economy. A lot of economists say that FDR's New Deal was not the reason we got out of the Depression but it was WWII that did it. The only thing that FDR did for sure was to do SOMETHING. So I think the same with Obama, he had to do SOMETHING. But while the whole country rally around FDR, the GOP tried to derail his effort.
ReplyDelete