C'mon speedy... you can't be making this argument with a straight face. Pagliano was paid by Clinton. If I hire a hitman, am I absolved of the murder?
Your numbers are off. The DJIA was 7949 on the day Obama was sworn in. It bottomed out at 6547 in March 2009. Your numbers on consumer confidence are close, but you didn't mention there was a nice uptick between Election Day 2016 and Inauguration Day 2017 - doesn't Trump get credit for that?
http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsr.pdf
The broader argument against Obama's economic record is that his policies (obamacare, Dodd-Frank, over-reaching regulations, misspent stimulus, etc.) placed headwinds rather than tailwinds in front of the economy and made the natural cyclical recovery the slowest and weakest in US history. Real GDP growth averaged only 1.6% on his watch. We could and should have done much better.
Originally Posted by lustylad
If you are going to give Trump credit, then you need to give Obama credit as well. However, you mainly say negative things about people that don't fit your ideological bent. Generally, presidents get too much credit and blame for economic outcomes. The Fed, Congressional budgets/laws, and macroeconomic events have bigger impacts.
Yes, I agree that Obama over regulated. But 2008 was an incredibly difficult time with Lehman and AIG et al hitting the fan. There were hard calls made and people from both sides of the spectrum helped to prevent a full blown depression.
If you back out the first 2 years of Obama's presidency (when the US economy shrank almost 3%... UK almost 5% and US unemployment rate was 10%) the GDP growth was ~2.5%. Not great for traditional recession recoveries, but 2008 was not a traditional recession. And that is pretty close to long term growth rate of our mature economy.
I like some of DJT's dereg plans... wished he focused on that and infrastructure to get some wins, instead of pissing away political capital on AHCA.