I was talking with one of my conservative friends (I still have a few!) the other day and the conversation briefly turned to President Obama. He stated that our former president’s policies were extremely bad for businesses and that in this regard Trump was a better President (please ignore the comment about Trump, I don’t want to talk about him but instead want to talk about the previous administration). I was a bit surprised about this as I always felt that Obama was a bit “conservative” in his dealings with business. For example:
[ul]
[li]With the 2008 banking crisis, he bailed out the banks instead of the people. He could have taken the billions of bailout money and used some of it for mortgage relief but instead let the homeowners swing and made the banks whole.[/li][li]He weakened bankruptcy protections for consumers. [/li][li]He allowed all the financial executives get off scot-free after the 2008 debacle.[/li][li]He allowed businesses to merge at unprecedented rates and did not try to reign in companies with monopolistic tendencies.[/li][li]With the very notable exception of the ACA, he was not all that great on social programs. Even the ACA was (to many) a conservative solution to the health care crisis; make people pay for their own healthcare.[/li][li]He was a staunch supporter of free trade.[/li][/ul]
I am sure we could argue (and maybe we will) on whether these policies are conservative or not, but it is hard for me to see how they are hostile to business. This leaves the elephant in the room: Dodd-Frank.
Dodd-Frank is definitely a policy of the Obama administration; it was based on proposals that he made in 2009. I can only assume that this is the main complaint of conservatives with regards to Obama era business policies? What, specifically, was bad for business about this law? Were there other methods of protecting Americans from the depredations we saw during the housing crisis that conservatives would have preferred? Is it the consumer protections that are bad for business? The reigning in of predatory lending? Can somebody spell this out for me in a clear concise way that is not just regurgitating the Fox line that everything a Democrat does is bad and everything a Republican does is good even when they are doing the same thing (Note: I don’t want the converse that you get from MSNBC either!)
He did not personally make this decision. That bill was drafted in congress and passed by congress.
>He weakened bankruptcy protections for consumers.
Yes and no. The Consumer Protection Act was one of his signature accomplishments, immediately trashed and undermined by Trump.
>With the very notable exception of the ACA, he was not all that great on social programs. Even the ACA was (to many) a conservative solution to the health care crisis; make people pay for their own healthcare.
Undermined at every step by Republican amendments (such as forcing people to ‘have more skin in the game’, as if we didn’t already) and then receiving no Republican support and nearly 50 attempts to repeal it during his presidency.
>He was a staunch supporter of free trade.
Free trade, for the most part, is good for everyone involved. Until Trump, the Republicans were militantly pro free trade.
If Obama was bad for business, why did the economy improve so dramatically during his administration?
Allowing the sharks responsible for the 2008 crisis to get away with it was a bad thing, though to what extent Obama was personally responsible for that I do not know. That said, one can quibble over any number of things; this was bad for business, that was good. What is unquestionably true is that American business did great when Barack Obama was President.
I don’t think Obama could reasonably be said to have weakened bankruptcy protection for consumers. He didn’t do everything he said to increase them, but that is not the same.
The Chamber of Commerce thought his consumer protection initiatives was too heavy-handed and un-accountable - maybe that is what your friend means.
If you are leaving the general home-owning populace to stew in underwater mortgages, that affects businesses’ demand. The nation’s consumers don’t consume. So in this sense, the right-wing “pro-business” choices described in the OP really were bad for business. Is that how it works?
Don’t look at the big regulations that we always seem to focus on. I think what happened under Obama was more an explosion of regulations issued by federal agencies and their bureaucracies.
It’s the untold thousands of small regulations and requirements that really kill small businesses. A mom and pop shop now has to worry about meeting untold numbers of federal mandates along with state and municipal ordinances. This requires hiring auditors and lawyers, and can really inhibit small business growth. The big corporations lve the regulatory state - they have the power and connections in place to sway the rules in their favor, they have entire departments with in-house lawyers to handle the messy work, etc. Small businesses have a much harder time of it, and therefore lots of regulations help keep them from growing and competing with the large corporations. Note how Dodd-Frank helped kill smaller banks and consolidate banking with the large banks.
I have no doubt that Trump’s deregulation and tax cuts are a big part of why the economy is red-hot. Those are about the only good things he’s done.
Well when you consider all of the stimulus money borrowed and spent in the billions and the recovery itself was the weakest recovery since the great depression, how good was it?
Welfare went up, and the % of the people working in the labor force went down during Obama’s tenure. Those are facts.
Obama did not prosecute one of the wall street crooks. A man who once kept shaking his finger at the top 1% is not making money from them bygiving speeches.
That ignores that a lot of regulations are actually pushed for by the businesses they regulate. When you’ve got a Tragedy of the Commons, and everyone recognizes it, you need a regulation to keep everyone playing fair and competitive. For instance, restaurants benefited significantly from the smoking bans that many localities have passed.
Silver Lining, if I’m not mistaken, you still haven’t explained what you mean by calling Obama’s recovery weak. And a President who didn’t prosecute any Wall Street crooks is at least preferable to a President who is one.
To the OP - you are trying to argue facts. This isn’t about facts, this about mythology. The accepted mythology is that Democratic administrations are “tax and spend”, “bad for business”, “weak on defense”, and so forth.
Now, is there some truth underlying these beliefs? Certainly, some. But for every verifiable fact supporting the myth, you could find a mirror image fact from a Republican administration that would also support the myth. But you would get nowhere pointing that out to your conservative friend.
Arguing facts against beliefs is like singing about food, it may sound pretty but doesn’t begin to fill my belly.
Also, unemployment is at an all-time low for African Americans and Hispanics, and the number of open jobs recently exceeded the number of people looking for work for the first time in decades. Wage growth is up, and take home pay up even further due to the tax cuts. Consumer spending is exceeding estimates, and consumer confidence is the highest it’s been in 17 years.
If you have been convinced that the economy is a disaster, you need to get out of the bubble.
I don’t think it’s a disaster. I also don’t think it’s much different than it was in December 2016.
For instance, let’s take African American unemployment. On Obama’s first day in office, the rate was 12.7%. And when he left office, it was 7.8%. On Trump’s first day in office, it was 7.8%. And as of May, it is 5.9%.
Are you saying, one of those is a disastrous economy, and one is a red-hot economy?
If you think a drop from 7.8% to 5.9% is indicative of a red-hot economy, shouldn’t a drop from 12.7% to 7.8% ALSO be indicative of a red-hot economy?
The Trump economy doesn’t really start till 2018. In 2017 the country was operating under the budget made by the previous congress and Obama. This lag is true for any new president.
If you look at the charts of the economy and unemployment Trump is continuing a clear trend that started back around 2010-2012. While that is good I really do not think you can give Trump all the credit for today’s economy.
