The economic legacy of Obama
Barack Obama will enter the pantheon of great orators when he leaves office this month. It’s easy to forget how much optimism and genuine hope he inspired on the campaign trail. Even now, after a rancorous eight years in office, he has a profound skill to inspire with his words. What is less well remembered is was just how much of a rotten state the economy was in when he inherited the Presidency.
In many ways, The financial crisis and its aftermath have been the spectre haunting his Presidency. The financial crisis was not one of Obama’s making, but he had to deal with much of the wreckage. He oversaw the recovery of the US banking sector following its post-crisis bailout; a recovery that must be the envy of his European peers, who never have really sorted out their banks.
Another defining challenge was the political backdrop: the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives two years into Obama’s first administration (i.e. following the November 2010 elections) and control of the Senate in the November 2014 elections.
