He created economic hardship with his green energy fiasco.
I think Obama did do a lot to steer our country from a huge disaster following the 2008 real estate bubble. The major banks needed recapitalisation after such heavy losses with CDS covering MBS and similar restructured debt that was poisoned with subprime mortgage debt. Huge wealth destruction measuring in the tens of trillions of USD was destroyed and this represents loss of not just capital, but assets that let banks extend loans.
Financial crisis of 2007–2008 - Wikipedia
There is a direct relationship between declines in wealth and declines in consumption and business investment, which along with government spending, represent the economic engine. Between June 2007 and November 2008,
Americans lost an estimated average of more than a quarter of their collective net worth.[
citation needed] By early November 2008, a broad US stock index the S&P 500, was down 45% from its 2007 high. Housing prices had dropped 20% from their 2006 peak, with futures markets signaling a 30–35% potential drop.
Total home equity in the United States, which was valued at $13 trillion at its peak in 2006, had dropped to $8.8 trillion by mid-2008 and was still falling in late 2008. Total retirement assets, Americans' second-largest household asset, dropped by 22%, from $10.3 trillion in 2006 to $8 trillion in mid-2008. During the same period,
savings and investment assets (apart from retirement savings) lost $1.2 trillion and pension assets lost $1.3 trillion. Taken together,
these losses total a staggering $8.3 trillion.[225] Since peaking in the second quarter of 2007, household wealth is down $14 trillion.
[232]
So we lost $14 trillion in personal wealth, largely home equity, which is a huge driver of small scale personal consumption, and we had a total financial loss of $8 trillion in addition, for a total of $22 TRILLION lost in that whole fiasco. We were facing an almost guaranteed depression if not a collapse of our entire financial system. Obama saved our asses during that period, though at the cost of anemic economic growth under heavy government controls.
We should really give some credit where credit is due. Despite using decades old, flawed Keynesian economics, Obama did get us through that dangerous period, and he took a lot of shit for it, including from me. He could have done better, but he did well enough to allow our financial system to survive intact. He should have gone further and used his presidential powers given him to protect vital national security interests to BREAK UP these too big to fail banks, and he faltered.
That will be a job for Trump to carry through on and it MUST be done. As well portrayed in the movie
The Big Short, our financial system is being run by idiots who are only good at cheating and following the herd....right off the cliff.
I would give Obama a B+ for his handling of the Great Recession, as he could have done better, but he could without a doubt have done MUCH MUCH WORSE.
