Is Obama "The Best Economic President In Modern Times?"

[The following post is by TDV Chief Editor, Jeff Berwick]

People still brainwashed by the two-party system have shared this week articles with titles like “It’s Official: President Obama Is The Best Economic President In Modern Times.”  Taking the clickbait, I dove head first into this article, only to discover it was linking to Forbes, a publication that I think, from time to time, has a few generally good articles on the economy. But this one is so ridiculous I had to double check if it was from The Onion.

The article is flawed, to say the least. For instance, that “since May 2013 the stock market has consistently been hitting highs” is no reason to cite for the economy being strong. There’s no mention that highs in the stock market are results of the Federal Reserve printing money with wild abandon.

The Forbes writer is the equivalent of showering praise on Robert Mugabe and his central bankster cohort, Gideon Gono, for how well the stock market was doing in June of 2008.  

Imagine how much they would have loved Mugabe by July when the stock market had skyrocketed to 6 trillion!  It kept going higher too. By October 22, 2008, the stock market was up 3,500%!  Emmanuel Munyukwi, chief executive of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, said on that day, ”Some people think that this is a bubble about to burst but I don’t think so.”

If Munyukwi isn’t now working as an economic reporter at Forbes he should be!

Another reason cited for Obama’s best President status is his job’s record. 

When The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS or more appropriately, simply, BS) issued its most recent jobs report, it disappointed many people who were expecting another month above 200,000 jobs added to the economy. People were optimistic. Those greenshoots were now a valley full of diversity and bounty or so they thought.  But others, like Bob Deitrick, CEO of Polaris Financial Partners,  remained impressed by Obama’s job record, as he told Forbes.

”President Reagan has long been considered the best modern economic President. So we compared his performance dealing with the oil-induced recession of the 1980s with that of President Obama and his performance during this ‘Great Recession.’

As this unemployment chart shows, President Obama’s job creation kept unemployment from peaking at as high a level as President Reagan, and promoted people into the workforce faster than President Reagan.

President Obama has achieved a 6.1% unemployment rate in his sixth year, fully one year faster than President Reagan did.  At this point in his presidency, President Reagan was still struggling with 7.1% unemployment, and he did not reach into the mid-low 6% range for another full year.  So, despite today’s number, the Obama administration has still done considerably better at job creating and reducing unemployment than did the Reagan administration.

We forecast unemployment will fall to around 5.4% by summer, 2015.  A rate President Reagan was unable to achieve during his two terms.”

Firstly, if Ronald Reagan, who doubled the size of the federal government, is the yardstick of the best economic president then even Robert Mugabe could be put in a good light.  Reagan talked a good talk but once VP George Bush tried to assassinate him he began to play ball for the Bush crime syndicate.

Aside from that, however, is the fact that the BLS employment statistics have been so hedonically (or hedonistically as we say) adjusted that it has taken out the unemployment from the unemployment numbers.

Shadowstats.com calculates the unemployment figure how it was calculated prior to 1994 when the figures were adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994.  Now, if you look for a job for a while and can’t find one you aren’t unemployed.  You just don’t want one.  Here is where the unemployment numbers currently stand if the way of calculating them was not adjusted in 1994 (and then numerous times afterward).

It currently stands at around 23%.

There are sure a lot of people who need assistance to eat considering the economy is doing so well.

It’s strange also that the amount of people who are employed as a percentage of the population has dropped so dramatically since 2008.

Obama certainly has created jobs, especially for the hardworking people who have to take on a second job because their hours were cut to avoid paying for medical care. 

The New York Times has noted of job growth under Obama, “…[P]art-time jobs accounted for two-thirds of all new jobs in June.” 

THE STOCK MARKET FALLACY

Deitrick sticks with his manipulation of statistics:

“As this chart shows, over the first 67 months of their presidencies there is a clear “winner” from an investor’s viewpoint. A dollar invested when Reagan assumed the presidency would have yielded a staggering 190% return.  Such returns were unheard of prior to his leadership.

However, it is undeniable that President Obama has surpassed the previous president.  Investors have gained a remarkable 220% over the last 5.5 years!  This level of investor growth is unprecedented by any administration, and has proven quite beneficial for everyone.

In 2009, with pension funds underfunded and most private retirement accounts savaged by the financial meltdown and Wall Street losses, Boomers and Seniors were resigned to never retiring.  The nest egg appeared gone, leaving the ‘chickens’ to keep working.  But now that the coffers have been reloaded increasingly people age 55 – 70 are happily discovering they can quit their old jobs and spend time with family, relax, enjoy hobbies or start new at-home businesses from their laptops or tablets.  It is due to a skyrocketing stock market that people can now pursue these dreams and reduce the labor participation rates for ‘better pastures.”

Deitrick nicely picks the very bottom of a complete collapse scenario as his starting point and makes the claim that Obama somehow saved the system at that time and the resulting returns were due to all his great work.

In reality what happened was that stocks had just collapsed as the entire financial system nearly collapsed from 14,000 the year prior and bottomed under 7,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (or as is more accurate, the Federal Reserve Industrial Average) and due to a historically unprecedented amount of money printing the system was jury-rigged together and is now solely rising due to money printing and a zero interest rate policy now going into its sixth year.

This all but ensures The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) and a complete collapse of the US dollar and economy… but until it fully collapses, all praise be to Obama.

REGULATE, REGULATE, REGULATE

What else has Obama’s regime done to improve the economy?  President Obama regulates. The number of regulations and rules has exploded during his presidency with acts like The Regulatory Flexibility Act which “directs federal agencies to assess the effects of their rules on small businesses.” This is like the police investigating the killing of innocent people after one of their officer’s opens fire. 

Agencies must, in regular reports, “describe regulatory actions they are developing that may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.” There’s just one thing, however. The government can never get the reports out on time!

Once the reports do appear, it becomes clear that Obama lies through his teeth. He once said, “In fact, I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.” Not true. 

The truth is small business hurting regulations have increased under Obama. The table below shows that, at the end of 2012, rules (active, completed, and long-term) destroying small businesses “from sea-to-shining sea” stood at 854. In fact, regularly of his presidency new regulatory rules exceed 800.

Of course, if you talk to communists or economically-illiterate people they will tell you we need the government to regulate people because people are bad… so we need the government, which is made up of people, to regulate the people who are bad…

All of these new regulations of course mean more money stolen from hard-working producers. But, despite that, the national debt has still SKYROCKETED under Obama.

THE NATIONAL DEBT

When it comes to the national debt, it involves more lies from Obama. As Washington Times states,

“President Obama likes to say that raising the nation’s borrowing limit “won’t add a dime” to the federal debt, but he neglects to mention that the government already has borrowed the equivalent of more than 60 trillion dimes since he took office.

When Mr. Obama became president in January 2009, the total federal debt stood at $10.6 trillion. This week, it hit $16.7 trillion — an increase of 57 percent. In the same time frame under President George W. Bush, total federal debt rose 38 percent. Under President Clinton, it rose 32 percent.

The administration says the government will run out of authority to pay its bills by Oct. 17 unless Congress raises the debt limit again to allow more borrowing.”

How does Obama portray the ultimatum that is the debt ceiling? 

“It does not increase our debt,” Mr. Obama said. “It does not grow our deficits. All it does is allow the Treasury Department to pay for what Congress has already spent.”

The truth of the matter is different.

“It’s certainly not the whole story,” Alex Brill, a budget specialist, told Washington Times. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the debt held by the public in the last four or five years, and it’s projected to only get worse.”

The article printed at Forbes falls short in many respects. The claim that the deficit has fallen since 2009 is gimmikry.  While it is technically true, the deficit in 2009 was a massively unprecedented $1.4 trillion.  Prior to that, even in inflation adjusted terms, the average deficit per year in the 70s was roughly $150 billion, in the 80s was roughly $300 billion, in the 90s was roughly $250 billion and in the 2000s prior to 2008 was $350 billion.  Since 2009, the average deficit in inflation adjusted dollars was $1.2 trillion (2009-2013), more than triple 2000-2008 and nearly ten times higher than the 1970s.

CONCLUSION

People still stuck in the left-right paradigm either loved the Forbes article and hated this article or loved this article and hated the Forbes article.  The reality is that it makes absolutely no difference whether it is a person with a (D) or an (R) behind their name.  The system and the American Empire is so far past over that the only difference if Mitt Romney had been President would have been in which countries he preferred to bomb from the options given to him by the Military Industrial complex.

The only thing that the President or the Government can do to help the economy is to disappear completely.  The best President, economically speaking, is no President at all.  The best central bank is no central bank at all.

Until people realize that they will continue to dwell in barely subsistence levels and warble on about which master they prefer who they perceive as being the less evil one.  The problem with choosing the lesser evil is that you are choosing evil.

In the meantime, while enough people belief in the religion of statism we’ll find ways to profit from their stupidity (the dictionary definition of stupidity is a tendency towards self-destruction) and ways to protect ourselves from the inevitable collapse of this fasco-communist police state system.

For more information on how to survive and prosper during and after the dollar collapse stick with us here at The Dollar Vigilante.

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