Doin’ OK. – Photographer: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
Ranking the Trump Economy
The current president boasts about the U.S. prosperity. But conditions improved more under his predecessors. (Even Carter.)
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Commentary and related
Interesting comparisons of many economic indicators under different presidents.
A large part of many families retirement and RESP investments are tied to economic performance and they did much better on average under the past president than the current. Yes the markets are cyclic but has this current drop been accelerated and made more severe?
The Obama administration inherited a mess and handed it off in much better shape. Since Trump has taken over there has been much more volatility and less stability which is showing in the US economy. With Canada tied to the US is many ways we affected.
Trump and many of his supports claim the only reason that Wall Street made money under the Obama administration was the $8 Trillion of quantitative easing (in this case buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities). They also claim other indicators did not do as well, QE along with the deficit have been cut back since 2016, including under Obama before the last election, the accumulated national debt was doubled and everyone who held stocks saw large gains.
QE has been stopped but the public and federal debt has steadily rose.
Multiple sources peg QE in the US at $4T from 2008 – 2015 and consensus from the vast majority of financial experts say it was needed to prevent much worse recession or even depression after deregulation in the financial industry in the US under previous governments. Canada did not do this and was less impacted directly.
Once the economy stabilized and growth resumed the US government needed to start slowly selling some of the assets from QE. Is this a significant factor in the stability and volatility issues we seeing now? Many think it more to do with the recent trade volatility and related causing uncertainty which hurts investment.
Related
The Secret Behind Growth in Trump’s America Is Deficit Spending – Bloomberg
December 21, 2018,
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