The Obama Economy

Over the past few months, I have repeatedly heard a lot of left-wing sources in the media and the blogosphere proclaim what a success the Obama presidency has been. The proclamation is how this brilliant man has managed to turn around the devastation to our country and its economy that was bequeathed to him by his Republican predecessor.

Now I am no fan of George W. Bush when it comes to how he governed our economy, and there absolutely is plenty of room for criticism there; however, has our current president really turned around our nation's economy?

When one refuses to listen to the Democrat spin-machine and looks at the actual data, the truth of the matter is readily apparent, and it is a truth that all but the most partisan progressives instinctively know.

The St. Louis Federal Reserve has a research wing (FRED) that pulls together from various governmental sources any number of economic data indicators that tell a much different story than those proclaimed on MS-NBC, by the DNC chair-woman, or from the Obama administration.  Let's take a look, shall we?

First, lets look at the total federal government debt as it relates to our gross domestic product.  In 2008, then-senator Obama rightly criticized President Bush for his "unpatriotic" and "irresponsible" spending.  It seems that when Obama took over the oval office though, his even-greater spending was no longer unpatriotic. Our economic output of our entire nation is the same as what our national debt is now.  Indeed our national debt has soared from $9 trillion when Bush left office to over $19 trillion today.  Irresponsible and unpatriotic indeed!

And here is another way of looking at our federal debt:

Next, the passage of the Affordable Care Act was touted as critical to providing health coverage to those that were uninsured and reducing health care costs for those that already had insurance.  President Obama said that his Obama-care would save the average family $2500 per year in costs.  The reality of it though is that the average family is now paying $2500 a year MORE in costs.

Of course taxes have been on the rise for many decades.  George W. Bush did cut taxes during his presidency, but the Democrat-controlled congress let the child credit provision expire under Obama's administration.  Further, net taxes increased along with increased spending and costly regulations.

With the economic recession that started in Bush's term in office, median family income continued to decline precipitously throughout the Obama administration.

With the higher costs of taxes, consumer goods, health care, and energy under Obama's leadership, the number of Americans that can afford to own their own homes has declined under his watch too.

Of course employment tanked during the end of 2008, but despite the sycophantic progressive medias' narrative to the contrary, Obama has not restored the real U-6 unemployment rate to pre-recession levels.  To further support this point, look at the labor force participation rate which shows how many people actually gave up looking for jobs and thus dropped out of the labor force.  (And this despite huge influxes of federal dollars to help put Americans to work with "shovel-ready jobs" that Obama later acknowledged never did exist.)

Our true unemployment rate for the nation is STILL in double digits today.

This next graph shows the effects of our money supply due to quantitative easings that began in the final months of the Bush administration and then continued with several additional rounds during the Obama administration.  This is a very dangerous policy that has the potential long term effect of creating hyper-inflation with the increased money supply based on no solid assets.  It is a dangerous policy that did not work during the great depression or for Japan in the early 2000's.  It's long term effects will most likely come back to haunt the U.S. economy severely... after Obama has left office.

There are many things that can be said about this next graph.  The first that comes to mind is that Obama so loved the poor, that he created millions more of them.  While the federal government touts their SNAP welfare program as a success, the fact that more people are in need of governmental assistance should be a sign that our economy is not going in the right direction.  Indeed, progressives gauge such programs' success by how many people are using them; conservatives gauge these by how many people no longer need them and are now self-sufficient.

Another arguably un-constitutional aspect of the misnamed Affordable Care Act was to remove private banks from loaning money for student loans and thus rolled that function into the federal government where lack of efficiency and greater government control holds sway on our higher educational system.

At the end of the day, despite the progressive media's sycophantic ravings to the contrary, our economy has not recovered and indeed its core underpinnings are in very precarious positions.  Unfortunately when things do start collapsing, Obama will likely have left office and thereby not be held accountable for his egregious mismanagement of our economy via failed progressive policies.

  Of course the media will dutifully find a way to spin this as the Republicans' fault accordingly. 

I am sure that will provide great comfort to all of us Americans afflicted by this Obama economy.