Despite his proclamation that he "saved the world from a Great Depression," the fact is that Obama will be the first President ever to not see a single year of 3% GDP growth - but only cynical fiction-peddlers would mention facts at a time like this. In yet more legacy-defending narrative, Obama told The NYTimes today that his biggest failure was being unable to sell his success in putting the American economy back on track to the American people (no matter the actual realities) careful to blame Republicans for slowing growth "by a percentage point or two." And then in a final affront to fact, Obama dismisses the conclusion of "The Big Short" proclaiming that he reined in Wall Street, overhauled the banking system, and made water from wine "the financial system substantially more stable."
With regard his presidential legacy, Obama recently said he was proud of the healthcare reforms, and added that:
"saving the world from a Great Depression – that was quite good."
Defending the sheer arrogance (and ignorance) of such a statement, he added, "I'm proud; I think I've been true to myself during this process." Truth must have a different meaning where he comes from, but of course, anyone doubting the truthiness of such a statement was hacked down to size with the now ubiquitous "Don't give up and succumb to cynics."
And now, as The Independent notes,
The interview, with the paper’s Sunday Magazine, was part an exercise in patting himself on his own back for lifting the US out of the economic morass he inherited from President George W. Bush and part remorse.
“I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform,” he said of the early days of his presidency. “By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.”
However, in fact, some might way his economic performance was simply the worst...
Obama is First President Ever to Not See Single Year of 3% GDP Growth
According to Louis Woodhill, if the economy continues to perform below 2.67% GDP growth rate this year, President Barack Obama will leave office with the fourth worst economic record in US history.
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%)
Still, Obama went on with the self-congratulatry tone - this time however admitting that it was all a snow-job...
“I mean, the truth of the matter is that if we had been able to more effectively communicate all the steps we had taken to the swing voter,” he told the interviewer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, “then we might have maintained a majority in the House or the Senate.”
While not quite making excuses, Mr Obama suggests that his failure better to communicate was in part due to being overwhelmed at the time.
“We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market.”
Saying he was sometimes kept “up at night” because of his failure to do more to fuel the recovery, Mr Obama focused especially on the missed opportunity of “a massive infrastructure project”, noting that 2012-2014, “was the perfect time to do it; low interest rates, construction industry is still on its heels, massive need - the fact that we failed to do that, for example, cost us time…It meant that there were folks who we could have helped and put back to work and entire communities that could have prospered that ended up taking a lot longer to recover.”
Perhaps the following nine charts will provide a little more color as just what "saving the world" looks like for President Obama (red shaded section is his 'reign') and why the American public just would not fall for his now-admitted bullshit...
But that's not all, in his New York Times' diatribe, President Obama takes further aim at more fiction-peddlers - those of "The Big Short"...as Bloomberg reports,
Reflecting on his economic legacy, President Barack Obama disputes the conclusion in “The Big Short” movie that nothing changed on Wall Street after the 2008 economic meltdown, and maintains that his policies have helped stabilize the financial sector.
...Obama bemoaned his fractious relationship with Wall Street, said finance is absorbing more science and engineering talent than it should, and speculated he might have gone into business if not politics. But he has little patience for criticism from business leaders.
“One of the constants that I’ve had to deal with over the last few years is folks on Wall Street complaining, even as the stock market went from in the 6,000s to 16,000 or 17,000,” he said, referring to the rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average during his administration.
“They’d be constantly complaining about our economic policies. That’s not rooted in anything they’re experiencing; it has to do with ideology and their aggravations about higher taxes.”
In the Dodd-Frank legislation to overhaul the financial system, Obama sees a major shift in how Wall Street is regulated. He takes issue with Hollywood’s version, reflected in the 2015 film “The Big Short,” which suggested that little has changed on Wall Street. The movie was based on the 2010 best-seller of the same name by Michael Lewis.
“There is no doubt that the financial system is substantially more stable,” Obama said, adding, “It is true that we have not dismantled the financial system, and in that sense, Bernie Sanders’s critique is correct.”
Yeah looks like you really showed them!!
We leave it to Obama to summarize from last week:
"Reject pessimism, cynicism and know that progress is possible. Progress is not inevitable, it requires struggle, discipline and faith.”
And question nothing, and reject reality in favor of Obama's propaganda, of course... if you had believed him, we would all being do so much better now!!