USA Gains 201,000 Jobs... Canada Looses 51,000

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6 hours ago, MJHolland said:

 

I really have to agree tremendously with Economy here. 

Please do not get me wrong, I admire President Obama and his legacy. If didn’t, I wouldn’t have worked for the man. With his leadership, the Great Recession was indeed reduced in size and scope. That doesn’t mean the response to the crash was not infallible. 

Like Economy said, the stimulus was the least we could have done, and it’s what almost every nation did that was affected. And as it relates to other nations, we spent a relatively smaller amount and had a relatively slower rollout. There was a long time where banks/their customers did not know if they were going to be bailed out, and it let to a lot of uncertainty and it deepened the crash, especially when you look how quickly a country like Canada responded to the crash. 

Other regulations and rule changes were not the direct result of Obama. Congress wrote Dodd-Frank, and many left leaning members had to fight Obama for the inclusion of things like the CFBP in particular (I believe Waren wrote in her second most recent book that she had to lobby Obama hard to get him to consider it). 

Secondly, there’s not a lot of evidence that banks meaningfully responded to these rule changes. And despite the massive amounts of money the Fed tried to inject through quantitative easing, backs still kept most of it in reserves and still do, hence the historic amount of excess reserves held in the banking system today. This is no one’s fault, just an observation. 

Lastly, many of the Obama-era rule changes that you cite are gone today. Particular, the Volcker rule was just repealed a few months ago, and banks are again allowed to trade dervivaties as they wish with your deposits. Despite that, we haven’t seen a drastic change in consumer confidence (or for that matter banking behavior — yet!); it’s really important that we don’t assume correlation is causation. 

It’s entirely true that Obama’s leadership stopped the recession from becoming a depression, but almost every president who faced a recession can tout this. Over time, then American economy and other economies have undergone a “great moderation” — a term used to describe the lessened volitility in business cycle changes. That was not a trend that started under Obama. 

Our government has a solid infrastructure to deal with the business cycle. That infrastructure includes the Fed, Congress, existing tax laws, and yes — the president. You say that our economy didn’t naturally pull itself out of recession, but that’s only partly true in the sense that nearly every administration would make economic recovery a “priority” and would have taken similar steps. 

Again, there’s little evidence/literature to show that American president have a great deal of impact on the economy 

You think Trump and his mismanaged, inexperienced, unprepared and understaffed staff could have pulled off this type of recovery? In the same time frame? No way! 

Trump and his staff have made economic decisions that endanger our relationships with our allies, hurt our climate and hurt our most vulnerable populations in this country.

It's easy to make sweeping decisions. (when you don't give a **** about the people it will impact) It's difficult to make decisions, while considering all the consequences of your actions in mind.

Not all Presidents are ready to hit the ground running when they are inaugurated. We were extremely fortunate that we had an intelligent, organized, even-tempered President...and one who studied and read policy papers and worked nights...at that time. We would have been in trouble with three and a half day work-week Donny and his revolving group of rejects! 

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Ugh Obama’s impact. Miss him dearly.