In reviewing three recent books about the Obama administration’s response to the Great Recession, American Enterprise Institute columnist James Pethokoukis offers National Review readers the following data:
In the first ten quarters of the Obama Recovery, real GDP is up a total of 6 percent, versus 16 percent in the Reagan Recovery [from the 1980-82 recession]. Or to put it another way, after ten quarters of recovery, the Reagan annual GDP-growth rate was 6 percent versus Obama’s 2.4 percent (versus 4.6 percent for the average post-World War II expansion). In the 32 months of the Obama Recovery, the economy has added about 2 million new new jobs, versus 9 million during the first 32 months of the Reagan Recovery.
But forget the epic achievements of Ronaldus Maximus. The Obama Recovery also falls short of the benchmarks the Obama White House set for itself. There’s the now-infamous chart prepared by [Jared] Bernstein and [Christina] Romer in January 2009 showing the unemployment rate never quite hitting 8 percent is Congress passed a big stimulus plan. Yet, as the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, the unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making the past three years the longest stretch of high unemployment in this country since the Great Depression. And when you add in discouraged workers and the underemployed who desire full-time gigs, the jobless rate is 14.9 percent.
