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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (57718)	10/25/2012 11:17:33 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

In a previously off-the-record interview with the Des Moines Register, President Obama argued that the economic recovery he's overseen isn't as bad as his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, claims. "In many ways, because of the actions we took early on, we're actually ahead of pace in the typical recovery out of a recession like this," Obama said. It's a point Obama and his supporters have made on occasion throughout the campaign. Earlier this year, Obama told attendees at a fundraiser about the "extraordinary progress" the economy was making. His deputy campaign manager recently claimed that Obama created more jobs than Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush had at similar points in their economic recoveries. First Lady Michelle Obama told a local Washington, D.C., radio station that the country was in the midst of a "huge" recovery. But the data are clear that Obama's economic recovery — which started in June 2009, five months after he was sworn in — has been worse than any recovery since the Great Depression. Overall economic growth has been slower in this recovery than in any of the previous post-World War II recoveries, according to the Minneapolis Fed, using data from Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the 12 quarters since the Obama recovery started, real GDP has climbed 6.7%. That's below even the GDP growth rate in the 12 quarters after the 1980 recession ended — despite the fact that there was the intervening deep and prolonged 1981-82 recession. The picture isn't any better when looking at job growth. Obama often boasts that the economy has added 5.2 million private-sector jobs in the 31 months since employment bottomed out in February 2010. But that rate of job growth lags every previous recovery as well if, as Obama does, you start counting at the point where jobs bottomed out. Bush oversaw 5.3 million new private-sector jobs in the 31 months after employment hit bottom in mid-2003. Under Reagan, private-sector jobs climbed 8.2 million during a comparable time period. What's more, Obama's recovery has reclaimed only about half the jobs lost during the recession. That's a far cry from prior recoveries, which saw the number of jobs exceed the previous peak by this point. In fact, had job growth under Obama kept pace with the previous worst recovery since World War II, there would be nearly 6 million more people with jobs today. To be fair, the president uses a qualifier in his quote, comparing his recovery to others "out of a recession like this." In the past, Obama has argued that recoveries from a financial crisis like the one that caused 2007-09 recession are invariably slow and painful. In June, for example, Obama said that "this was not your normal recession." He added that "throughout history, it has typically taken countries up to 10 years to recover from financial crises of this magnitude. Today, the economies of many European countries still aren't growing. And their unemployment rate averages around 11%." Obama points to the work of economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who say that recoveries from financial crises tend to be protracted. Recently, the two wrotethat "if one compares U.S. output per capita and employment performance with those of other countries that suffered systemic financial crises in 2007-08, the U.S. performance is better than average." But the claim that financial crises always produce slow recoveries isn't set in stone. In fact, an October 2011 paper by the Atlanta Fed concluded that "U.S. history provides no support for linking low employment and high unemployment in the current recovery with the financial crisis of 2007—2008." And a November 2011 paper by economists at Rutgers University and the Cleveland Fed concluded that while recessions tied to financial crises tend to be deeper than average, the recoveries also tend to be stronger than average. Study co-author Michael Bardo noted that, based on these findings, "the slow recovery that we are experiencing from the recession that ended in July 2009 is an exception to the historical pattern."