Saturday, March 11, 2017

Riding Obama's Coat Tails

When Obama took office we were in the worst financial crisis since the depression and he had to deal with it.  It wasn't easy and he took a lot of grief at the time and subsequently for the continued problems which after about a year he had turned around.

We then had an almost unprecedented period of economic and job growth, although because of various factors, primarily a change in the basis of the American economy, certain lower skilled individuals were left behind.

The solution is of course to improve the skills of the workforce to prepare them for the jobs of the future which are not going to be the mindless factory work which was at one time the backbone of the economy, robots do that now.  Humans have to apply human skills, which means thinking and developing skills.

Now the growth is real and is continuing for now and is largely the result of the last 8 years of Obama's policies but of course also the result of American entrepreneurial efforts.

What was celebrated by Trump after one month as America being great again is actually an acknowledgement of his predecessor's accomplishments, although he would never admit that.

Still the question is how long will it take him to derail our growth?

Some of his policies might lead to a short term boost if the infrastructure bill actually passes, but he seems likely to reduce trade and pursue meaningless strategies in pursuit of jobs that simply don't exist anymore.  The end result of that will be a recession, as the infrastructure spending slows, the debt increases, interest rates rise and exports fall.

Its just a question of how long really.  Obama's coat tails are only so long after all.

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