Fat hurts wrote:
Econ 101-102 wrote:
For this statistic, yes. If someone were to ask you which market you'd want to inherit if your goal was to have the largest increase a year into your presidency, wouldn't you want a stock market that JUST purged thousands of points? (Of course you would, because there's only one way to go from there- up.)
Nonsense. There was plenty of down side and plenty of talk about falling into a depression.
Obama turned things around bigly. Our recovery was far better than other nations because Obama pursued a policy of stimulus instead of austerity.
I agree with the sentiment of Fat hurts here. What Econ 101-102 isn't remembering is that Republicans ripped on Obama and "his" economy the entire time Obama was in office. This was inaccurate and unfair. Many people (myself included) saw unprecedented wealth creation during his administration. Then as soon as Trump took office, everything was suddenly rosy to them.
Now for the nitpicky stuff:
1) Obama definitely deserves SOME credit for the market turn around. For some reason, people seem to forget how bad it was in late 2007 to early 2009. There was a lot of bi-partisan support for the actions Obama took early on.
2) At the same time, a rebound from such a horrible recession is going to happen, and while he walked into a really bad situation and did all the things necessary to help turn it around, he was buoyed by the fact that it WAS going to turn around. So, what I'm saying here is that this rebound would have happened almost no matter what and almost no matter who was President at the time...though to be fair, Obama did not make any mistakes during this time, and as you said Fat hurts, we could have fallen into a Depression for sure had he made mistakes. He did not.
3) Obama (and now Trump) have also hugely benefited from the large numbers of Baby Boomers who have been steadily retiring in droves for years now. When the unemployment rate hit 10% in fall 2009, I said that eventually we would have record low unemployment and that the US would be hurting to find qualified workers in several industries. That time has come to pass, and it would be here no matter who won the Presidency in 2016.
4) Trump deserves credit (though I don't agree with how this was done) for the rising stock market after he took office. Big unnecessary corporate tax cuts and deregulation with threats of more, primed the stock market for sure.
5) Trump deserves blame for the recent tanking of the market mainly with his tariff talk. It is rare for a US President to so directly affect the stock market, but he has done this both up and down since he has been in office.
6) Obama doesn't get the credit he deserves. Regardless of market cycles, he inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression. The market began its historic rise in March 2009 and continued almost unfettered all the way through his 8-year presidency. The market was already in great shape and had been for a long time when Trump took over. We were already at what is considered full employment (under 5%) when Trump took over.