-
TimMcM said...
Anyone who says no, needs to look at the 5 charts at the top of the following article. It is obvious that he did.
The graphs can't be copied (at least by me), but it contains the actual facts and figures that many on both sides seem to have forgotten.
http://www.fairobserver.com/article/did-obama-turn-around-economy Did Obama Turn Around the Economy? 12 MARCH 2012 JEFFREY FRANKEL An analysis of the economic growth during the Obama Administration. Professor Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard Kennedy School of Government examines whether the economic statistics really show no discernible improvement since President Obama's inauguration.
With November’s election fast approaching, the Republican candidates seeking to challenge President Barack Obama claim that his policies have done nothing to support recovery from the recession that he inherited in January 2009. If anything, they claim, his fiscal stimulus made matters worse. And, despite recent improvement, the level of unemployment indeed remains far too high.
Obama’s Democratic defenders counter that his policies staved off a second Great Depression, and that the US economy has been steadily working its way out of a deep hole ever since. Middle-ground observers, meanwhile, typically conclude that one cannot settle the debate, because one cannot know what would have happened otherwise.
There is a good case to be made that government policies - while not strong enough to return the economy rapidly to health — did indeed halt an accelerating economic decline. "Government policies" does not just mean the fiscal stimulus the new president steered through Congress when he took office, but also the Obama version of TARP, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s aggressive monetary stimulus. All three policy initiatives remain extremely unpopular with Republicans, and ambiguous among swing voters.
But the middle-ground observers are of course right that one cannot prove what would have happened otherwise. It is also true that it is rare for a government’s policies to have a major impact on the economy immediately. These things usually take time. One cannot infer the merit of a new president’s policies from the path of the economy during his first few months in office. (For example, you cannot blame George W. Bush for the recession that began two months after he took office in 2001. There hadn’t yet been time for bad policies to damage the economy.)
But here is the remarkable thing: whether one listens to the Republicans, the Democrats, or the middle-ground observers, one gets the impression that the economic statistics show no discernible improvement around the time that Obama took office. In fact, the reality could hardly be more different.
This is especially true if one looks at revised economic statistics, which show the US economy to have been in far worse shape in January 2009 than was reported at the time. In January 2009, the annualized growth rate in the second half of 2008 was officially estimated to have been negative 2.2%; but current figures reveal it to have been a horrendous negative 6.3%. This is the main reason why the level of economic activity in 2009 and 2010 was so much lower than had been forecast, which in turn explains why unemployment was so much higher.
Figure 1 shows the quarterly economic growth rate. The maximum rate of contraction — a veritable freefall in the economy — came in the last quarter of 2008 (the quarterly GDP data come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Commerce Department). More specifically, it came in December, according to the monthly GDP estimates from the highly respected MacroAdvisers. (See monthly income figures in the form of growth rates in Figure 2 or levels of GDP in Figure 3.) This was the month before Obama was inaugurated. The situation miraculously began to improve as soon as Obama’s term began!
The full force of the fiscal stimulus package began to go into effect in the second quarter of 2009. The NBER officially designates the end of the recession as having come in June of that year. GDP growth turned positive in the third quarter.
US economic growth slowed down again in late 2010 and early 2011, as one can see in Figure 1. The timing coincides with the beginning of withdrawal of the Obama fiscal stimulus. Indeed, the government has been the one sector to experience contraction in income and employment over the most recent five quarters. The private economy has been expanding.
Other economic indicators, such as interest-rate spreads and the rate of job loss, also turned around in early 2009. Labor-market recovery normally lags behind that of GDP - hence the "jobless recoveries" of recent decades. But the graph of monthly job losses and gains reveals that here, too, the end of the freefall came precisely when Obama was inaugurated. The last two charts show the same "V" shaped pattern in the monthly job change figures that are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as the GDP growth figures that are released by the BEA. The rate of job growth over the last two years, inadequate as it is, actually exceeds the rate of job growth during the Bush Administration, even if one counts only the period before the big recession hit in December 2007.
Again, these graphs do not demonstrate that Obama’s policies yielded an immediate payoff. In addition to the lags in policies’ effects, many other factors influence the economy every month, making it difficult to disentangle the true causes underlying particular outcomes.
What is the right way to assess whether the fiscal stimulus enacted in January 2009 had a positive impact? Start with common sense. When the government spends $800 billion on such things as highway construction, teachers and policemen who were about to be laid off, and so on, it has an effect. Workers who would otherwise not have a job now have one. Furthermore, they may spend some of their income on goods and services produced by other people, creating a multiplier effect.
Those who claim that this spending does not boost income and employment (or that it even hurts), apparently believe that as soon as a teacher is laid off, a new job is created somewhere else in the economy, or even that the same teacher finds a new job right away. Neither can be true, not with unemployment so high and the average spell of unemployment much longer than usual.
They also think that the government deficit drives up inflation and interest rates, thereby crowding out other spending by consumers and firms. But interest rates are rock bottom, even lower than they were in January 2009, while core inflation is running at its lowest levels since the early 1960s. The conditions of the last four years - high unemployment, depressed output, low inflation, and low interest rates - are precisely those for which traditional "Keynesian" remedies were designed.
Economists’ more sophisticated forecasting models also show that the fiscal stimulus had an important positive effect, for much the same reasons as the common-sense approach. The non-partisan US Congressional Budget Office reports that the 2009 spending increase and tax cuts gave a positive boost to the economy, and indeed had the extra multiplier effects of the traditional Keynesian models. Allowing for a wide range of uncertainty [to allow for different economists' views], the CBO estimates that the stimulus added 1.5%-3.5% to the level of GDP by the fourth quarter, relative to where it otherwise would have been. The boost to 2010 GDP, when the peak effect of the stimulus kicked in, was roughly twice as great.
To be sure, of the many theoretical models produced by eminent macroeconomists at prestigious universities, some say that fiscal stimulus has no positive effect on the economy, even under recent economic conditions. (The theoretical innovations underlying the models have even won Nobel Prizes for the innovators, and not without justice.) But these models are not sufficiently realistic to meet the market test: they are not used by private businessmen for whom getting good forecasts matters to their planning and in turn to the success of their businesses.
Of course, econometric models do not much interest the public at large. A turnaround needs to be visible to the naked eye to impress voters. Given this, one can only wonder why basic charts, such as the 2008-2009 "V" shape in growth, have not been used - and reused - to make the case.
Schaefnuts70426
- 5 stars Rating: 82
1351 votes total - (1222)
- 25 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
-
Buckeye Warrior
- 4 stars Rating: 78
14574 votes total - (13911)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
-
McCague said...
Tim,
What's wrong with you? You keep coming up with facts to prove your case. Everyone knows conservatives get confused when confronted by facts. They rarely, if ever, encounter them on the "news" programs they watch. Adding charts befuddles them even more. You need to simplify your approach - hand out crayons.
Shame on you. That borders on bullying - and at best, abuse of the ignorant. I think a non-understanding or belief in facts is on the checklist when they sign up for being a Republican/conservative/Tea Partier.
This post was edited by Buckeye Warrior on 6/4/2012 at 11:40 AM
www.miamiproject.miami.edu/
Buckeye Warrior
- 4 stars Rating: 78
14574 votes total - (13911)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
-
Buckeye Warrior
- 4 stars Rating: 78
14574 votes total - (13911)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
-
Buckeyeboy45
- 5 stars Rating: 91
1749 votes total - (1694)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
-
McCague said...
Tim,
What's wrong with you? You keep coming up with facts to prove your case. Everyone knows conservatives get confused when confronted by facts. They rarely, if ever, encounter them on the "news" programs they watch. Adding charts befuddles them even more. You need to simplify your approach - hand out crayons.
Shame on you. That borders on bullying - and at best, abuse of the ignorant. I think a non-understanding or belief in facts is on the checklist when they sign up for being a Republican/conservative/Tea Partier.
-
zeke_tolliver
- 5 stars Rating: 85
1827 votes total - THE Logical Fallacy
- (2184)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
-
zeke_tolliver said...
The claim that the Obama Admin has contributed more to the National Debt than all previous Presidents is absolutely not true. The fact is that the National Debt has increased about the same as it did under Bush. Granted that's an over-all 50% increase over where the National Debt stood when Obama took office.
It is closer to say that the Bush Administration added more to the national debt than all previous presidents, but even that would not be true.
The fact is that the National Debt is a huge problem that nobody in Washington seems interested in addressing. At least not in a bi-partisan manner. The road ahead only gets murkier the longer Republicans want to jam a Reaganomics Redux down the American Public's throats. Republicans and Conservatives seem to forget that the age of run-away deficits was ushered in by Reagan.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot afford 4-more-years of Obama anymore than we can afford 4-more-years of NeoCon economic policy.
www.miamiproject.miami.edu/
Buckeye Warrior
- 4 stars Rating: 78
14574 votes total - (13911)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
-
TimMcM said...
Anyone who says no, needs to look at the 5 charts at the top of the following article. It is obvious that he did.
The graphs can't be copied (at least by me), but it contains the actual facts and figures that many on both sides seem to have forgotten.
http://www.fairobserver.com/article/did-obama-turn-around-economy Did Obama Turn Around the Economy? 12 MARCH 2012 JEFFREY FRANKEL An analysis of the economic growth during the Obama Administration. Professor Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard Kennedy School of Government examines whether the economic statistics really show no discernible improvement since President Obama's inauguration.
With November’s election fast approaching, the Republican candidates seeking to challenge President Barack Obama claim that his policies have done nothing to support recovery from the recession that he inherited in January 2009. If anything, they claim, his fiscal stimulus made matters worse. And, despite recent improvement, the level of unemployment indeed remains far too high.
Obama’s Democratic defenders counter that his policies staved off a second Great Depression, and that the US economy has been steadily working its way out of a deep hole ever since. Middle-ground observers, meanwhile, typically conclude that one cannot settle the debate, because one cannot know what would have happened otherwise.
There is a good case to be made that government policies - while not strong enough to return the economy rapidly to health — did indeed halt an accelerating economic decline. "Government policies" does not just mean the fiscal stimulus the new president steered through Congress when he took office, but also the Obama version of TARP, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s aggressive monetary stimulus. All three policy initiatives remain extremely unpopular with Republicans, and ambiguous among swing voters.
But the middle-ground observers are of course right that one cannot prove what would have happened otherwise. It is also true that it is rare for a government’s policies to have a major impact on the economy immediately. These things usually take time. One cannot infer the merit of a new president’s policies from the path of the economy during his first few months in office. (For example, you cannot blame George W. Bush for the recession that began two months after he took office in 2001. There hadn’t yet been time for bad policies to damage the economy.)
But here is the remarkable thing: whether one listens to the Republicans, the Democrats, or the middle-ground observers, one gets the impression that the economic statistics show no discernible improvement around the time that Obama took office. In fact, the reality could hardly be more different.
This is especially true if one looks at revised economic statistics, which show the US economy to have been in far worse shape in January 2009 than was reported at the time. In January 2009, the annualized growth rate in the second half of 2008 was officially estimated to have been negative 2.2%; but current figures reveal it to have been a horrendous negative 6.3%. This is the main reason why the level of economic activity in 2009 and 2010 was so much lower than had been forecast, which in turn explains why unemployment was so much higher.
Figure 1 shows the quarterly economic growth rate. The maximum rate of contraction — a veritable freefall in the economy — came in the last quarter of 2008 (the quarterly GDP data come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Commerce Department). More specifically, it came in December, according to the monthly GDP estimates from the highly respected MacroAdvisers. (See monthly income figures in the form of growth rates in Figure 2 or levels of GDP in Figure 3.) This was the month before Obama was inaugurated. The situation miraculously began to improve as soon as Obama’s term began!
The full force of the fiscal stimulus package began to go into effect in the second quarter of 2009. The NBER officially designates the end of the recession as having come in June of that year. GDP growth turned positive in the third quarter.
US economic growth slowed down again in late 2010 and early 2011, as one can see in Figure 1. The timing coincides with the beginning of withdrawal of the Obama fiscal stimulus. Indeed, the government has been the one sector to experience contraction in income and employment over the most recent five quarters. The private economy has been expanding.
Other economic indicators, such as interest-rate spreads and the rate of job loss, also turned around in early 2009. Labor-market recovery normally lags behind that of GDP - hence the "jobless recoveries" of recent decades. But the graph of monthly job losses and gains reveals that here, too, the end of the freefall came precisely when Obama was inaugurated. The last two charts show the same "V" shaped pattern in the monthly job change figures that are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as the GDP growth figures that are released by the BEA. The rate of job growth over the last two years, inadequate as it is, actually exceeds the rate of job growth during the Bush Administration, even if one counts only the period before the big recession hit in December 2007.
Again, these graphs do not demonstrate that Obama’s policies yielded an immediate payoff. In addition to the lags in policies’ effects, many other factors influence the economy every month, making it difficult to disentangle the true causes underlying particular outcomes.
What is the right way to assess whether the fiscal stimulus enacted in January 2009 had a positive impact? Start with common sense. When the government spends $800 billion on such things as highway construction, teachers and policemen who were about to be laid off, and so on, it has an effect. Workers who would otherwise not have a job now have one. Furthermore, they may spend some of their income on goods and services produced by other people, creating a multiplier effect.
Those who claim that this spending does not boost income and employment (or that it even hurts), apparently believe that as soon as a teacher is laid off, a new job is created somewhere else in the economy, or even that the same teacher finds a new job right away. Neither can be true, not with unemployment so high and the average spell of unemployment much longer than usual.
They also think that the government deficit drives up inflation and interest rates, thereby crowding out other spending by consumers and firms. But interest rates are rock bottom, even lower than they were in January 2009, while core inflation is running at its lowest levels since the early 1960s. The conditions of the last four years - high unemployment, depressed output, low inflation, and low interest rates - are precisely those for which traditional "Keynesian" remedies were designed.
Economists’ more sophisticated forecasting models also show that the fiscal stimulus had an important positive effect, for much the same reasons as the common-sense approach. The non-partisan US Congressional Budget Office reports that the 2009 spending increase and tax cuts gave a positive boost to the economy, and indeed had the extra multiplier effects of the traditional Keynesian models. Allowing for a wide range of uncertainty [to allow for different economists' views], the CBO estimates that the stimulus added 1.5%-3.5% to the level of GDP by the fourth quarter, relative to where it otherwise would have been. The boost to 2010 GDP, when the peak effect of the stimulus kicked in, was roughly twice as great.
To be sure, of the many theoretical models produced by eminent macroeconomists at prestigious universities, some say that fiscal stimulus has no positive effect on the economy, even under recent economic conditions. (The theoretical innovations underlying the models have even won Nobel Prizes for the innovators, and not without justice.) But these models are not sufficiently realistic to meet the market test: they are not used by private businessmen for whom getting good forecasts matters to their planning and in turn to the success of their businesses.
Of course, econometric models do not much interest the public at large. A turnaround needs to be visible to the naked eye to impress voters. Given this, one can only wonder why basic charts, such as the 2008-2009 "V" shape in growth, have not been used - and reused - to make the case.
minsterbuckeye
- 4 stars Rating: 62
5756 votes total - (4056)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
- 4 stars
-
Buckeye Warrior said...
You really do want your head in the sand. I thought at first you were playing a joke acting like Obama doesn't spend anything. Now that I see you are serious, I now consider you a loon no different than Dave. For anyone in their right mind to actually think that Obama is NOT a big spender is insane or doesn't want to know the truth (looney). Congrats, you have lowered yourself to that of Dave.
minsterbuckeye
- 4 stars Rating: 62
5756 votes total - (4056)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
- 4 stars
-
Schaef-nuts said...
I didn't think I was at a point where I could lose more respect for you, Tim, but alas I have lost EVEN MORE respect for you after reading this ridiculous post.
The charts you link to assume 2 very important things: 1. the data is correct, and 2. 2007 is the benchmark for a good economy. Unfortunately, both are untrue. Therefore your charts are shit, you article is shit, and you my friend... are shit.
Take a look at the charts that I have posted below and tell me how you think Obama is doing with the economy. So much for charts telling us what to think, huh? Or do the ones below tell the REAL story?
Perhaps I could post a daily chart of the stock market. On an UP day that means Obama is a good president and on a DOWN day he is a bad one. Because that's all your charts really show. They all show that the economy took a huge shit right as Obama was about to take office and then it had a dead cat bounce shortly after he took the oath (remember that oath... the one that promises to "uphold the Constitution"?) Therefore, before he even got a chance to IMPLEMENT one of his socialistic plans, the economy "recovered"? Why? Because he's a nice dresser? Because he's black? Both of those things? It certainly wasn't because of anything he had DONE, because he hadn't done a goddam thing yet.
Jesus, you are a retard man. You really make me worry about people in general.
Though often asked, God does not take sides in politics or college football.
-
minsterbuckeye said...
NO, NO, NO, we will hold Obama to his OWN WORDS......he will be a ONE term President.......you can put all the mumble jumble u want......I call on and network with people who call on Manufacturing throughout the Midwest.....and companies are HURTIN.........here is a project for u Timmy Boy......go to 10 Manufacturing companies in what ever area you live, and talk with them on what they think about OBAMA and how the economy is going, you might have your eyes opened a little bit.......
Though often asked, God does not take sides in politics or college football.
-
TimMcM said...
Actually unemployment in my area is 6.4% and most of the workers think Obama is doing okay to good except for those deluded fools who buy into the same sad propaganda that you believe in. The CEOs and top management of the companies want to get the GOP in, despite their record salaries. My area of Ohio will go to Obama.
In fact I was speaking to a small business owner the other day who will probably vote for Romney, though he doesn't really like him. He is a fiscal conservative Republican whose household income is close to $300,000 a year. He said something very interesting to me. He said, "I really don't understand how anyone who is making under $75,000 a year would vote for for any Republican, the way the party has gone. People voting against their own economic interests just makes no sense to me." Makes you think doesn't it? Well not you but those who are capable of nonpartisan thought.
Here a project for you Georgie Girl, during study hall ask the kids around you if they are happy with the student body president?
minsterbuckeye
- 4 stars Rating: 62
5756 votes total - (4056)
- 27 months
- Send Message
- Follow User
- Ignore User
- 4 stars
-
zeke_tolliver said...
The claim that the Obama Admin has contributed more to the National Debt than all previous Presidents is absolutely not true. The fact is that the National Debt has increased about the same as it did under Bush. Granted that's an over-all 50% increase over where the National Debt stood when Obama took office.
It is closer to say that the Bush Administration added more to the national debt than all previous presidents, but even that would not be true.
The fact is that the National Debt is a huge problem that nobody in Washington seems interested in addressing. At least not in a bi-partisan manner. The road ahead only gets murkier the longer Republicans want to jam a Reaganomics Redux down the American Public's throats. Republicans and Conservatives seem to forget that the age of run-away deficits was ushered in by Reagan.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot afford 4-more-years of Obama anymore than we can afford 4-more-years of NeoCon economic policy.
-
Buckeye Warrior said...
Job Growth has declined for the past 6 month's and the unemployment percentage just went up. Also, the revised job growth numbers were also adjusted down for the last few month's.
Those facts say the economy is not good.
Though often asked, God does not take sides in politics or college football.
- This post is for members of Bucknuts only. Join now! 7-Day Free Trial
Though often asked, God does not take sides in politics or college football.
-
gpracer73 said...
How is a Op Ed piece fact? I am beginning to think you are just playing a game on here much like Dave is, because no one can be this blind
You notice the author repeadetly states that this is his opinion on the data he is using, that you can make the argument easily that the exact opposite is true and you also cant prove his opinion is correct using Obama's policies that if nothing was done at all the same results could have happened.
Here is a good paragraph from his OP ED piece that sums up the entire article
"But the middle-ground observers are of course right that one cannot prove what would have happened otherwise. It is also true that it is rare for a government’s policies to have a major impact on the economy immediately. These things usually take time. One cannot infer the merit of a new president’s policies from the path of the economy during his first few months in office. (For example, you cannot blame George W. Bush for the recession that began two months after he took office in 2001. There hadn’t yet been time for bad policies to damage the economy.) "
Though often asked, God does not take sides in politics or college football.
-
minsterbuckeye said...
i talked to some kids selling lemonaide the other day...and they want romney......Timmy Boy there is a VERY uneasy feeling among manufacturing companies because they don't know what Obama will throw at them next......FACT.
Though often asked, God does not take sides in politics or college football.
Did Obama Turn Around the Economy?