Remember, Hillary wants to continue with similar economic policies if she becomes president
(Washington Post) The White House labored Thursday to explain a first-quarter economic report showing the weakest growth in two years, even as President Obama was trumpeting his mastery of the economy in a New York Times Magazine interview.
The Department of Commerce reported that U.S. gross domestic product rose 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2016, the third straight sluggish start to a year. Consumer spending and business purchases both fell, continuing trends that could have ominous implications for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as she tries to claim the mantle as Mr. Obama’s successor.
Of all the metrics used to quantify economic well being, GDP is the most important. And GDP has been anemic during the vast majority of Obama’s presidency. This is the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. So, of course, Blamestorming!
Jason Furman, Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, blamed the first-quarter slowdown on “weak foreign demand and low oil prices,†and some private economists say growth should pick up later this year. But Republicans were quick to trumpet the disappointing number as an indictment of the administration’s economic stewardship.
Not too be outdone, Josh Earnest
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that congressional Republicans were in part to blame for the weak growth, saying the economy would be stronger if Congress had agreed to Mr. Obama’s proposals for higher spending on infrastructure projects three or four years ago.
“The reason that opportunity was missed was because of Republicans’ stubborn refusal to consider any priority that President Obama has identified. That’s unfortunate,†Mr. Earnest said.
So, the answer is more government spending, per Earnest. Why is the answer never “grow the private sector”? Mr. Obama himself attempted to defend his poor economic record in an interview with the NY Times, which is long on excuses. And Republicans were quick to pounce
“Today’s GDP report showing the weakest period of economic growth in two years is the latest sign the Obama economy isn’t working,†said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. “Despite all of the evidence Obama’s liberal policies are leaving middle-class families behind and holding back growth, Hillary Clinton thinks this president doesn’t get enough credit and wants to double down on his failed agenda.â€
The only two metrics that seem to be doing well, at least on the surface, are the unemployment rate and stock markets. Of course, the unemployment rate is low due to historic numbers of people dropping out of the jobs market, and let’s not forget that wages are low, due to so many of the jobs being part time and service industry. As far as the stock market goes, I thought liberals hated Wall Street? GDP, along with earnings growth, are the two most important metrics for We The People. If you’re one of the 1%ers, you’re doing pretty well in the Obama economy. Otherwise, you aren’t doing so well. And if this continued poor GDP continues, Obama will have a historic record
Again, 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%)
Congratulations, Mr. Obama! Of course, this means economic pain for the non-1%, who have suffered under your foolish economic and regulatory state policies.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
There hasn’t been any growth — remember that the Obama Administration added government spending to GDP, and despite that AND lying repeatedly (and then adjusting numbers downwards quietly later), we get horrible numbers like 0.5% growth, which means we are (and likely have been) at negative numbers.
We never got OUT of the hole from 2008 — trillion-dollar deficits and printing money have been par for the course under Obama. And yet it’s because winter is cold, or an unexpected warm season, or pretty much any shiny distraction to keep from admitting that Obama and his policies are failures by every measurable metric.
I would wager, were his numbers being reported honestly, he would be second worst if not outright worst. But instead the first (half) Black President has to be graded on a curve.
President Boyfriend must be protected.
At. All. Costs.
The GOP hates WallStreet and the 1%ers?
But I thought you believed in the trickle down theory
You blame Obama? What about those wealthy job creators that the GOP gave all the tax breaks to, why aren’t they creating jobs?
Obama’s job approval numbers are 3 times as high as those of the GOP Congress
I wonder whom the people blame the most?
What has Congress done to help? Except try and help those 1%ers pay less in taxes
Most Americans think he is doing ok
Most Anericans think the GOP sucks
Most Americans gave the last dem Congess much better approval numbers
If we had spent $2 trillion on infrastructure starting in 2008 the economy (the private sector, morons!) would be much stronger. Thanks conservatists!
Conservatists have been wrecking the economy since the 1980s, culminating in the 2007 Bush/Cheney deregulation meltdown, and have been sabotaging the recovery. Thanks conservatists!
The conservatist prescription to fix what they’ve broken? More tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and more corporate deregulation! Brilliant!
You know who’s not fooled? The voters. Moderates will keep the White House, and possibly take the Senate back from the extremists. They will make inroads in the House. In a couple of election cycles our long national conservatist nightmare will be over.
Even the presumptive Repub candidate for President recognizes that conservatist polices have failed the working classes.
In this election cycle, how many Americans support the traditional conservatist Republican policy of tax cuts for the wealthy and more deregulation of corporations? 5%? 10%? Most of them comment at the Pirate! You’re a dying breed, my friends!
The Blacks and Latinos are outbreeding the southern rednecks who spend all their time smoking their testicle-shrinking meth or offing themselves with oxycontin.
So gather up your meth pipe and your blunderbuss and wait for the revolution to wash over you.
Jeff,
Your previous comments indicate that you have zero knowledge of politics, economy or the history of the depression we are in. You are totally unaware of the fact that Barney Frank was the main individual who brought down the economy, you don’t know that Obama has kept the stock market propped up to the tune of one trillion dollars per year, what do you know? Do you read outside of partisan web site on the internet? NO.
-the little guy who exagerrates often and conveniently forgets the Omnibus bill, auto bailouts, Cash for Clunkers, Obamacare, crony subsidies for failed alt-energy schemes, putting successful coal companies out of business and more workers out of jobs…
The dems own it all.
David7134 wrote: “Jeff, Your previous comments indicate that you have zero knowledge of politics, economy or the history of the depression we are in. You are totally unaware….”
And he does it so effortlessly.
D-boi’s 1,2,3… If we had spent $2 trillion on infrastructure we’d be much better off.
But conservatists do not believe in macroeconomics.
White Supremacist D-Boi: How does Obama funnel 1 trillion a year into the stock market. You keep making the claim but conveniently refuse to back it up. You can’t possibly really believe that one Congressman could collapse the world’s economy. That’s dumb even by The D-Boi’s famously low standards.
dp,
Don’t forget the 11 to 30 million illegal, wet backs that are allowed to stay here and take needed American jobs.
White Supremacist D-Boi lands a solid jab with “wetbacks”!
Here’s a test quiz for you history and economics impaired D-Boi’s.
1. How did Obama cause wage stagnation since wages have been stagnant for the past 30 years? (5 points)
2. How did Obama cause the Great Recession of 2008 since he didn’t take office until Jan 2009? (5 points)
3. Since your answer to Question 2 proves that Obama didn’t cause the Great Recession, how did Representative Frank cause the Great Recesson? (5 points)
4. What are your best 5 solutions for stimulating the US economy, i.e., increasing GDP growth? (2 points each)
5. Bonus: Without using the words “wetback”, “kike”, “spic”, “nigger”, “darkie”, “lazy”, “takers”, “coon” or “deadbeat” explain in a few sentences what caused the collapse of the housing boom. (4 points).
White Supremacist D-Boi is excused from the bonus question as it’s just too unfair to him.
The little guy caught in public
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kWdk-JyGlH8
J Boy ¼ wrote:
Well, the porkulus plan was valued at somewhere around 40% of that, and it neither gave us better infrastructure nor held unemployment down to 8%, as we were promised it would. It did add over $800 billion to the deficit, and therefore more than that to the national debt.
And what did it do? Well, around here we had a nice, big green sign telling us that the road work on US 209 was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and all it was was a two-year early repaving of about ¾ mile of US 209, something that the state would have had to have done anyway in a couple of years.
So, we borrowed more money from the Bank of China, something Senator Barack Hussein Obama said was irresponsible and unpatriotic when he could blame it on President Bush, to do a job two years early that was now not going to be available for contractors when it would normally have come around.
It’s kind of difficult for J Boy ¼ to blame the porkulus plan on Republicans, because the Democrats had control of both Houses of Congress, including a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for a while, and they didn’t need the GOP to go along with their plans. It’s all on the Democrats.
The result? Well, unemployment skyrocketed much higher than we were told the ARRA would keep it to, and while we have been in a recovery, it has been a very tepid one. The official unemployment numbers are down, but that’s because so many people have just given up looking for work, and are living on welfare or the grossly expanded disability rolls.
And the national debt? It stood at $19,186,207,744,589.55 as of the 28th. No wonder the Obama Administration wants to remove President Jackson from the $20 bill: he was the only president ever to completely pay off the national debt!
Clearly you don’t know what you are talking about.
You seem to think that spending 2 trillion would have jumped started the economy, forgetting of course that the money has to come from somewhere and someone’s pockets. Of course, the government could issue bonds, but that just kicks the costs down the road (plus adding interest.)
Even more ridiculous, you seem to think that investing on one area of the economy is somehow “macro-economics.”
It isn’t, but facts never seem to phase you.
Jeff,
I have never used the racist language that you constantly come up with.wet back, yes, that is not racist as it refers to scum that are here illegal and harming our country. If it offends them they can go home, where they call us far worse. As to old Frank, that is far more complicated to relate in comments. Go to books and read them, it spells out exactly what he and the democrats did. Can you read?
Oh White Supremacist D-Boi… you never disappoint. Wetback is not a slur because they are harming our country. Good lord. By that logic, a typical Louisianan referring to a Black lady as a “nigger” is only slurring her if, in his opinion, she is harming the country! Have you ever treated any “niggers” in your million dollar practice?
What do you call a white supremacist conservatist making a good living treating patients he despises and collecting money from taxpayers and, in my opinion, is harming the country? You probably took the Hypocritic Oath. You’re a “turdball”. It’s not a slur since in my opinion deadbeats like you’re living off the hard work of others and harming our country.
Visit Mexico and ask them in a border town if they consider “wetback” a slur. Go to a bar and “Do any you wetbacks wanna prostate exam from an American patriot?”.
Donald Trump is harming America, making him “Turdball Deluxe”.
Jeff,
That was quite a screed of hate. You do realize that your intolerance of what you think I am (and not) is just as bad as the so called white supremacist that you have invented. You do realize that you have the white bwana syndrome. Yes, wet backs are causing harm to our country, but you would not recognize that as you live in a wealthy neighborhood and have oh so much money. You likely have no idea of the middle class. I truly love your accusations, you own a drug company. You are sticking it to the average American with your inflated prices and repackaging of old drugs with an astronomical price that people can not afford. All the while you pride yourself on developing “anti-cancer” drugs that only appear to have some effect due to the ridiculous manipulation of statics. It can’t get much sorrier.
[…] in November it will just be Obama’s third term. But then real economic news comes out, so the White House goes on a blamestorm, pretty much pointing blame everywhere else but at themselves. It’s not their fault GDP only […]
dave,
I live in the same small house I bought over 35 years ago as a graduate student, and live a middle class lifestyle in a middle class neighborhood. Raised three kids and sent them to local public schools. So you’re wrong.
After decades in large and small pharma I cofounded a small biotech company that repackages nothing and sells nothing. We are developing novel drugs for the treatment of cancer. So you’re wrong.
Tell me more of what you know about the activity of our drugs and how their effects are due to the manipulation of “statics” (sic). So you’re wrong again.
And yes, “wetback” is a slur.
Mr Carver wrote, addressing J Boy ¼:
At the end of World War II, we had increased the national debt tremendously, but 99% of the national debt was held by Americans. That meant that the debt service was still held within the United States, that when the government was making interest and principal payments, it was keeping that money in the United States.
Here’s Senator Barack Hussein Obama on how things were done under President Bush:
The problem is, is that the way Obama has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $10 trillion for the first 43 presidents – #44 added $8,559,330,695,676.47 by his lonesome, so that we now have $19,186,207,744,589.55 of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $60,163 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.
And Jeffrey seems to think that we should have added $1.2 trillion more to the national debt!
Now, when the government makes principal and interest payments, part of that money is going overseas, to investors in China and the UK and a lot of other places. The money that stays in the US gets spent again in the US, increasing the velocity of money, helping to make us more prosperous; the money which is sent overseas leaves our economy, reducing the velocity of money within our country, making foreigners wealthier, but Americans poorer . . . and Jeffrey would have us do more of that!