Obama Saved Capitalism and All He Got Was Smacked Around

This is one beauty of an analysis and it's the truth -- Obama saved capitalism and got smacked around and called a socialist by Wall Street and voters. What does it say about a nation that expected Obama to turn around a major recession, a near catastrophe, in less than two years? Now watch as republicans take credit as the economy continues to grow. It's already grown five straight quarters and job losses peaked in 2009.

It's likely that jobs will continue to grow at a snail's pace, though. That's because people are getting their financial act together and have cut back on being consumers.

All of the above is good for capitalism, and should end any serious-minded discussion about Obama the socialist. But more than anything, the fact that the president took on the structural flaws of a broken free enterprise system instead of focusing on things that the average voter could understand explains why his party was routed on Tuesday. Obama got on the wrong side of voter anxiety in a decade of diminished fortunes.

“We have done things that people don’t even know about,” Obama told Jon Stewart. Certainly. The three signature accomplishments of his first two years — a health care law that will make life easier for millions of people, financial reform that attempts to level the playing field with Wall Street, and the $814 billion stimulus package — have all been recast as big government blunders, rejected by the emerging majority.

But each of them, in its way, should strengthen the system. Read the whole thing at NYT

Here's another fact from the article, and I can vouch for this. Betting that Obama would spare us a depression, I reinvested in stocks when prices were low, and I'm at pre-2008 crash levels. People probably don't realize that their 401Ks and IRAs have risen. That's part of what Obama was saving when he "bailed out" the financial system:

Suppose you had $100,000 to invest on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated. Why bet on a liberal Democrat? Here’s why: the presidency of George W. Bush produced the worst stock market decline of any president in history. The net worth of American households collapsed as Bush slipped away. And if you needed a loan to buy a house or stay in business, private sector borrowing was dead when he handed over power.

As of election day, Nov. 2, 2010, your $100,000 was worth about $177,000 if invested strictly in the NASDAQ average for the entirety of the Obama administration, and $148,000 if bet on the Standard & Poors 500 major companies. This works out to returns of 77 percent and 48 percent.