Obamanomics: A Counterhistory (NY Times)

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/sunday-review/obamanomics-a-counterhistory.html?hp&_r=0

<snip>
In my interviews with Obama advisers during that time, they emphasized that they knew the history and were determined to avoid repeating it. Yet of course they did repeat it. After successfully preventing another depression, in 2009, they have spent much of the last three years underestimating the economy’s weakness. That weakness, in turn, has become Mr. Obama’s biggest vulnerability, helping cost Democrats control of the House in 2010 and endangering his accomplishments elsewhere.

Entire books and countless articles have taken Mr. Obama to task on the economy, and administration officials have a rebuttal that makes a couple of important points. The Federal Reserve and many private-sector economists were also too optimistic, Obama aides note. And they argue that the Senate would not have passed a much larger stimulus in 2009, given Republican opposition, regardless of the White House’s wishes.

<snip>
By any measure, Mr. Obama and his team faced a tremendously difficult task. They inherited the worst economy in 70 years, as well as an opposition party that was dedicated to limiting the administration to one term and that fought attempts at additional action in 2010 and 2011. And the administration can rightly claim to have performed better than many other governments around the world.

But their claim on having done as well as could reasonably have been expected — to have avoided major mistakes — is hard to accept. They considered the possibility of a long, slow recovery and rejected it.

.......more

[upaloopa]

1. Obstruction that is the reason for the slow recovery

Jobs bill, infrastructure bills and second stimulus blocked by repukes to keep a recovery from happening is the reason for a weak recovery and no matter how the MSM wants to blame Obama it doesn't stick.

[On the Road]

2. With the GOP House and the Existing Decifit,

it's debatable how much more money Obama could have made available for stimulus. But it's certainly true that economic forecasts were too optimistic and that Obama did not do a good enough job of lowering expectations.

[BootinUp]

4. They wanted people to spend money, they had to tell a good story to some degree.

[BootinUp]

3. Heres my question

who would have done a better job? If you can't make a compelling case that some other politician would have, then why are we talking about this. Water under the bridge, just one author's assholish opinion.