Obama Admits Couldn't "Convince Americans Of Recovery", Bashes 'The Big Short'
The interview, with the paper’s Sunday Magazine, was part an exercise in patting himself on his own back for lifting the US out of the economic morass he inherited from President George W. Bush and part remorse.“I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform,” he said of the early days of his presidency. “By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.”
Obama is First President Ever to Not See Single Year of 3% GDP GrowthAccording to Louis Woodhill, if the economy continues to perform below 2.67% GDP growth rate this year, President Barack Obama will leave office with the fourth worst economic record in US history.Assuming 2.67% RGDP growth for 2016, Obama will leave office having produced an average of 1.55% growth. This would place his presidency fourth from the bottom of the list of 39, above only those of Herbert Hoover (-5.65%), Andrew Johnson (-0.70%) and Theodore Roosevelt (1.41%)
“I mean, the truth of the matter is that if we had been able to more effectively communicate all the steps we had taken to the swing voter,” he told the interviewer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, “then we might have maintained a majority in the House or the Senate.”
“We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market.”
Reflecting on his economic legacy, President Barack Obama disputes the conclusion in “The Big Short” movie that nothing changed on Wall Street after the 2008 economic meltdown, and maintains that his policies have helped stabilize the financial sector....Obama bemoaned his fractious relationship with Wall Street, said finance is absorbing more science and engineering talent than it should, and speculated he might have gone into business if not politics. But he has little patience for criticism from business leaders.“One of the constants that I’ve had to deal with over the last few years is folks on Wall Street complaining, even as the stock market went from in the 6,000s to 16,000 or 17,000,” he said, referring to the rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average during his administration.“They’d be constantly complaining about our economic policies. That’s not rooted in anything they’re experiencing; it has to do with ideology and their aggravations about higher taxes.”In the Dodd-Frank legislation to overhaul the financial system, Obama sees a major shift in how Wall Street is regulated. He takes issue with Hollywood’s version, reflected in the 2015 film “The Big Short,” which suggested that little has changed on Wall Street. The movie was based on the 2010 best-seller of the same name by Michael Lewis.“There is no doubt that the financial system is substantially more stable,” Obama said, adding, “It is true that we have not dismantled the financial system, and in that sense, Bernie Sanders’s critique is correct.”
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