Obama was lucky, very lucky, when it comes to his failed economy. He became President when the economy was at its low point over the bursting of the real estate bubble from sub prime mortgages. Sub prime mortgages are those that the lender has some doubt that the loan will ever be repaid. In order to cut losses lenders invented creative mortgage gimmicks and sold these mortgages in packages to investors hidden among good mortgages to avoid or limit losses. Ironically, Obama was one of the attorneys whose action forced the use of subprime mortgages. In 1995, Obama represented two of the three named plaintiffs, Brooks and Roberson, and was second named for Bucyks-Roberson against Citibank Federal Savings Bank, claiming that they didn't get a mortgage because they were black. In actuality, it was because the bank denied the mortgage based on economics. Besides the three named plaintiffs, there were 183 that were unnamed. In 1998 the law suit was settled for $1.3 million. Each of the three named plaintiffs received $20K, Obama received $23K from 360K awarded to his law firm. The remainder was to be distributed to the 183 unnamed plaintiffs, but few of the them got any part of the distribution. The lawyers kept it.
The bursting of the mortgage bubble resulted in a severe recession. The Fed was forced to drop interest rates to practically zero. Normally low interest rates encourage employment and growth of the economy, but Obama's required some tricks to make the economy better than it really was. First, he said that if someone was unemployed for more than 6 months, they were no longer counted in the unemployment statistics. Even though they were considered unemployed, their unemployment benefits were increased from 26 weeks to 99 weeks. Therefore he was paying many people who were unemployed not to work or those who worked off the books to double dip. What was the result of this slight of hand was that the unemployment figures, that were announced on Thursday each week, almost always more than the new employment numbers given out on Friday, yet the unemployment rate appear to drop. Despite all of this, the economy grew at a seemingly positive, but very slow rate. Obama always blamed his predecessor, Bush, when ever one of his economic policy failed and that occurred frequently. Despite interest rates remaining near zero for his entire eight years of presidency, GDP grew only at less than 2% per year until the very end of his presidency. Obama hated capitalism, but did support one type of capitalism, crony capitalism, and this resulted in companies like Solyndra receiving hundreds of millions of dollars only to go bankrupt shortly after receiving the money and paying huge bonuses to its executives. Obama even had a group of CEOs serve as advisors to try and present some favor to American Business. His favorite CEO was Jeffery Immelt, who drove GE into the ground. GE was one of the most popular stocks, held by many investors in 401Ks and IRAs for its robust dividend. Under Immelt, GE crashed and its dividend went to $.01/share If it weren't for a reverse stock split, the stock would still be in single digits.
Despite the left's media attempts to favorably compare Obama's last three years to Trump's first three years, the economy was really in shambles. More of this will be discussed when I talk about domestic policies and who really benefited. Meanwhile, when Trump came into office, he reversed many of Obama's costly programs and real employment improved, especially limiting crony capitalism, lowering taxes, making America's partners pay their fair share, and getting out of costly agreements that didn't make sense like the Paris Climate Accord, that favored our enemy China. Unemployment for various groups dropped to record lows and people had more money in their pockets to spend. The Fed began raising its rates, but inflation stayed very low.
Then Biden took office and immediately reversed many of the policies that Trump had initiated, restored Obama's terrible economic policies, and sowed the seeds of inflation. The Covid pandemic was essentially over, but Biden realized he could still use it to control Americans and the economy. States that emerged early from the lockdowns did well, and those that stayed locked down did poorly, not only economically, but educationally. So poorly, that some of these states changed graduation requirements from high schools and that that forced colleges and universities to lower their entrance requirements. (This supports my arguments that China exported Covid-19 from its Wuhan Lab on purpose.)
Most importantly, Biden's actions forced inflation, supported crony capitalism, and spent money wildly, money that we did not have, so we had to print it. Interest rates soared to the highest they have been since Jimmy Carter. Instead of trying to help Americans, Biden continued to support more wasteful spending and tried to place a positive spin on his economic disaster, by lying that it was working and called it "Bidenomics", a term to most that had a very negative rather than positive ring to it. Like Obama, he tried to blame his preecessor Trump for his failures, but this was so ridiculous to everyone that it didn't work. People realized his economic policies were a failure and his approval ratings plunged, even among non NeoMarxist Democrats who had seized control of the Democrat Party. The thing that most destroyed the economy was climate change, green politics, and the attack on fossil fuels that began during the Obama regime and resumed under Biden. In Part 3, I will offer more specifics about actual programs and policies to show why Biden and Obama were failures.
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