For reasons that remain unclear to most observers, President Obama didn't smack down the torrent of lies that Mitt Romney professed during last week's debate but I will tackle the simplest of those here... that we as a country are somehow worse off economically than when President Obama came into office. Just take a look at this chart.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the agency charged with measuring the size and growth of the U.S. economy, initially projected that the economy shrank at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the last quarter of 2008. Months later, the bureau almost doubled that estimate, saying the number was 6.2 percent. Then it was revised to 6.3 percent. But it wasn't until 2011 that the actual number was revealed: 8.9 percent. That makes it one of the worst quarters in American history.
I realize it was only 4 years ago but we have a short memory as a country and as citizens and maybe we don't even know that the initial numbers reported back in 2009 were wrong. The Bush-and-Republican policy-led economic collapse dropped real GDP by 8.9 per cent in the 4th quarter of 2008!! Holy fucking shit.
Output in the third and fourth quarters fell by 3.7% and 8.9%, respectively, not at 0.5% and 3.8% as believed at the time. Employment was also falling much faster than estimated. Some 820,000 jobs were lost in January, rather than the 598,000 then reported. In the three months prior to the passage of stimulus, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers, not 1.8m. In January, total employment was already 1m workers below the level shown in the official data.
CBPP now estimates that the unemployment rate, which reached 9.8 percent in 2009, would have approached 12 percent in the absence of the stimulus. As the numbers show, in the last quarter of 2008 the contraction of the U.S. economy was greater than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930's.
Yes, the stimulus, the president's second-most derided success (after Obamacare, which successfully saved taxpayers $430M in Medicare fraud yesterday), knocked 2 full points off the unemployment rate and pretty much saved our economy from absolute utter collapse after the GOP had 8 years to fully implement their supply-side ideologies. And now, some 45% of the country (but hopefully not more) wants to go back to those policies that ruined our economy. I honestly have never seen such a clear and certain choice for president before and I cannot imagine how any person in their right mind would vote for Mitt Romney's economic plans, such as they are. Oh, and unemployment is finally back down under 8% and continues to move in the right direction. When Obama was elected, our economy was shedding close to 800,000 job a month, for 6 straight months! Thank you, Mr. President, for saving our asses from the wreckage that George Bush laid into our pocketbooks. Sorry the fucking retards on Fox News and those who watch it don't recognize you've brought 31 straight months of private sector employment growth after we were shedding 800,000 jobs a fucking month!!!!!
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