NEWS

Boyle column: Did Obama really 'tank our economy?'

By John Boyle
President Barack Obama

So by now, I think we all realize political ads are about equal parts syrupy schmaltz and pure hokum.

Honestly, when one comes on the boob tube, no matter who the candidate is and what party it favors, I just assume it's a large pile of festering horse poop.

But that doesn't mean I don't find them amusing.

Take State Rep. Tim Moffitt's ad featuring Tim and his dad talking about how they both started their own successful businesses as young men but lament the future of our great land because "Obama tanked our economy." Forget for a second that Moffitt, a Republican, is not running against Obama but rather a local Democrat, Brian Turner, who's never held political office.

That's just political strategy, trying to link a candidate to a president who's unpopular in the mountains.

What's amusing for its sheer audacity is the notion that Obama singlehandedly tanked the economy. I don't agree with some of Obama's economic policies, and lord knows the economic recovery has been painfully slow and way too many Americans are still suffering economically.

But to review, the economy started showing signs of weakness in 2008 and fully "tanked" that fall when Lehman Brothers went belly up. Obama got elected that fall and took office in January 2009.

George W. Bush was president in 2008 and had been since 2001. Remember Bush holding emergency meetings with Wall Street titans and telling the country it was essential that Congress approve the bank bailout?

This nugget, from an October 2012 Council on Foreign Relations article, might trigger your memory:

"Upon taking office at the peak of the global financial crisis Obama extended the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program — also known as the bank bailout — that President George W. Bush enacted in October 2008. In February 2009, Obama signed into law a $787 billion economic stimulus package to create new jobs, extend unemployment benefits, and cut taxes."

Just for kicks, I recently posted this story from Forbes, not exactly a bastion of liberalism, on my Facebook page: "Obama Outperforms Reagan On Jobs, Growth And Investing."

It started off noting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics' August job report was a disappointment, with the economy creating a paltry 142,000 jobs last month, after six consecutive months over 200,000. But it went on more positively:

"Even though the plus-200,000 monthly string was broken (unless revised upward at a future date,) unemployment did continue to decline and is now reported at only 6.1 percent. Jobless claims were just over 300,000; lowest since 2007. Despite the lower than expected August jobs number, America will create about 2.5 million new jobs in 2014. And that is great news."

Some of my Facebook friends countered with other articles, including one from LibertyMe.com titled, "Forbes is wrong, Reagan's economy is better than Obama's."

"Here's the thing, no serious economist takes the unemployment rate seriously since it excludes people who have stopped looking for work altogether. According to economist James Sherk, 'The drop in unemployment since 2009 is almost entirely due to the fact that those not looking for work do not count as unemployed.'"

It goes on.

In fact, every one of these arguments do. Do a Google search and you can find numbers to back up your view — and your political stripe — whatever it may be. By being selective, you can make a really convincing case, one way or the other.

• Quantitative easing is destroying the economy and putting us at a disadvantage globally. If the Obama administration didn't take that route, the economy would've collapsed.

• The stock market is booming, with the Dow recently crossing 17,200, record territory. Thank Obama for that, bub. Presidents have almost no influence over the stock market, and it'd be higher if Obama weren't such a dolt. That's capitalism at work, pal.

• The Dodd-Frank bill, which Obama signed into law in 2010, is strangling the supply of capital, stifling banks and growth. The Dodd-Frank Bill is saving America from its own worst financial impulses similar to those that caused the housing bubble to burst in the first place.

• The fed has kept interest rates artificially low and we have almost no inflation — 1.7 percent through August — which is not healthy. During the Bush years of 2005-'06 it hovered around 3.4 percent, and the economy was much healthier. If the fed didn't keep interest rates so low, we'd have inflation comparable to the Carter administration, and the economy would whither.

• Corporations, who find creative ways to pay almost no taxes, are sitting on more money than they've ever had before, so we're poised for growth. Corporations, which have to deal with the highest corporate tax rate in the western hemisphere, are sitting on more money than they've ever had because they're terrified by Obama's economic policies and they're overtaxed.

• The Gross Domestic Product growth rate stood at 4.57 percent last year, up from 3.47 percent in 2010 and soaring in comparison to 2008 and '09 in the height of the Great Recession — -.92 percent and .11 percent, respectively. It's actually dropped this year to 4.06 percent, and it's nowhere near where it was during the Bush years, such as 2005 and 2004 — 6.52 percent and 6.31 percent, respectively.

Tired yet?

Here's my point: Presidents get way too much credit when the economy goes right and way too much blame when it goes sour, and that goes for Bush and Obama.

Obama didn't "tank our economy" any more than Moffitt did. You could argue that Bush did, if you want to blame a president, but the housing bubble collapse came after a decade of absurd price run-ups and inane loan practices condoned by Democrats and Republicans alike. Bush didn't singlehandedly tank the economy, either.

In my mind, the economic collapse was a least a decade in the making, and it's going to take at least that long for us to emerge, at which time we'll probably start engaging in the irrational exuberance that got us in trouble in the first place.

Meanwhile, I'm not buying this particularly load of horse digestive material.

This is the opinion of John Boyle. Contact him at 232-5847 or jboyle@citizen-times.com