How Did President Obama Screw Up The Great Economy He Inherited?

I only have one question as I listen to Republicans talk about how badly President Obama has screwed up the economy and that is how did he mess up the great hand he was dealt? You know with the 24 hour news cycle we have today and short attention spans it’s hard to remember how things were when President Obama assumed office January 20, 2009. I decided to rent a time machine from the local Home Depot and find out how great it was.

In order for me to make a proper assessment I decided to go back a few months before the election and see how prosperous the economic picture was in order to get a feel for the economic momentum that was taking place. I plugged in the time machine and had to hurry because it was rented for just half a day. I decided to travel back to September 2008. When I arrived, I was shocked by the chaos. All hell was breaking loose and on September 15, 2008 the largest bankruptcy in United States history took place when the investment bank Lehman Brothers sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. I started to think that things were not going so well back then.

I decided to cruise through September 2008 and saw banks merging, credit markets freezing and a near collapse of the entire financial system. I also saw President George W Bush standing in front of a microphone addressing the nation on how dire the economic situation had become. When I got to October 2008, there was a $700 billion taxpayer bailout of financial companies that brought the economy crashing down. In October 2008, 240,000 Americans lost their jobs and the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high.

As I continued forward through 2008 towards 2009 the economic carnage continued as job losses for November 2008 were 533,000 and 632,000 jobs were lost in December 2008. I could only guess that a miracle took place in January 2009 before President Obama was inaugurated and the economy took off into the stratosphere, but I was mistaken. In January 2009 the economy lost another 598,000 jobs. The U S Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that payroll employment had declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the 2 months before President Obama was sworn in and January 2009 the month he took office.

So wait a minute, so the economy was not in great shape when President Obama took office. What are these people talking about? The U S automobile industry almost failed and President Obama intervened to save it or we could have lost another 1 million jobs. By most accounts the economy has added around 4 million jobs since President Obama took office.

I’m confused about how President Obama screwed up so badly. It seems like he actually saved a failing economy. It must be the short attention spans we have today. Oops, I’ve got to get this time machine back before they charge me for another 4 hours.