Barack Obama Tried to Take Credit For Trump’s Economic Growth

obama economic credit
US President Barack Obama gets emotional as he speaks on reducing gun violence in the East Room of the White House on January 5, 2016 in Washington, DC. At right is US Vice President Joe Biden. AFP PHOTO/MANDEL NGAN / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Former President Barack Obama set countless economic records during his administration – unfortunately none are worth celebrating. Just take a look at what the real Obama recovery looked like:

The statistics are even more shocking when you bench him with a conservative president like Ronald Reagan.

He’s out – and things are looking up. The stock market has surged to record highs time and time again, unemployment is falling, labor force participation is finally ticking upward, and wages are finally rising again.

And would you believe that Obama somehow believes that he’s to thank for it all? According to the Washington Times, “at a conference of mayors in Chicago, Mr. Obama congratulated himself Tuesday for strong employment numbers in the U.S. this year, saying his climate-change policies have contributed to growth.”

Here’s what Obama said: “As we took these actions, we saw the U.S. economy grow consistently. We saw the longest streak of job creation in American history by far, a streak that still continues by the way.”

More:

The stock market has gained about 30 percent in value since Mr. Trump’s election in November 2016, and gross domestic product has increased more than 3 percent in each of the past two quarters. The jobless rate, meanwhile, has dropped to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent.
Regardless, while the economy was growing slowly during Mr. Obama’s presidency, but many business leaders and economists credit Mr. Trump’s regulatory rollback and his push for tax cuts as reasons for the economy picking up steam this year.

Well, where to start? Maybe by pointing out once more that the Obama presidency wasn’t all that great for the economy? The man never even saw a single year of 3% GDP growth, making him the first president since the Great Depression to never see such growth. To illustrate how important even a seemingly minuscule difference in economic growth is compounded over time, note that an economy growing at 2% a year will double in size every 35 years, while one growing at 3% will double every 23.5 years. In other words, it would take the economy growing at 2% an additional 11.5 years to catch up to the wealth of the one growing at 3%. And thanks to compounding, the gap will only exacerbate over time at an accelerating rate.

And all that began to change (not coincidentally) when Trump took office. Growth this year has been as follows:

Q1: 1.24 percent

Q2: 3.06 percent

Q3: 3.3 percent

4Q (PROJECTED): 3.9 percent

If the fourth quarter plays out as expected, we’ll close the year with 2.9 percent growth, which is just touching the 3% figure that Obama never reached. It should be noted too that the first quarter of 2017 is the quarter he had the least influence on, just due to the timing of when he was inaugurated.

People on Twitter ripped Obama for his fake success story:

Share this story if you think Obama is a liar!

By Matt

Matt is the co-founder of Unbiased America and a freelance writer specializing in economics and politics. He’s been published... More about Matt

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