by Agence France Presse
Hundreds of thousands of American forced out of their homes, the Stock Market tanking and the economy losing 700 thousand jobs a month.
That was the bleak economy Barack Obama inherited as he took office in 2009.
Jared Bernstein, Economist and Advisor to Obama administration from 2009 to 2011, said: “Our GDP was declining at a rate of 8 percent, which is huge. Technically you call that a nightmare, we were losing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs per month. in the first quarter that the President took office, so 2009, Q1, we lost over 2 million jobs. So that’s an example of the depth of the recession.”
President Obama enacted a large fiscal stimulus package, extending government spending by over 800 billion dollars.
Unemployment started to fall by the end of his first year in office and has continued to add jobs for 75 consecutive months, over 14 million new jobs in all — the longest period of sustained job growth on record.
US economic growth has significantly outpaced that of every other advanced nation.
And even the deficit has declined by roughly three-quarters since he took office.
“It’s actually pretty hard to find, overall macroeconomic statistics that don’t shine a pretty positive light on the American economy. Especially compared to many of our European neighbours. That said, and this is important, and it’s particularly important reflection on the election outcome, it doesn’t mean that everyone is benefitting from that macroeconomic picture,” Bernstein said.
Many Americans have dropped out of the labor force. Average household income is $4,000 lower than when Bill Clinton left office. Costs have outpaced paychecks. And job options have dwindled for blue collar workers and rural communities.
Donald Trump electoral victory is mainly thanks to his appeal to those who feel they have been left behind by the economic recovery.
Trump promises to overturn almost every one of Barack Obama’s key policies from his eight years in the White House.
But his economic achievement, turning a recession into record employment, cannot be erased by the Republican president-elect.