Heckuva job Larry Summers! This figure has been making the rounds:
As many have noted, after four years, Trump was the worst. EVAR. But if we want to pretend the pandemic never happened (and if we do, then Carter should get a mulligan for stagflation, and so on), the only Democratic president who did worse after three years was Obama. The politics of austerity were awful, though in fairness, he had more job creation than many presidents of the neo-liberal austerity era*. It does explain, in part, how we got to where we are today.
*Reagan preached austerity, but he engaged in massive amounts of military Keynesianism. It really wasn’t until Bush senior that austerity politics and balanced budget obsession became a thing.
mikethemadbiologist
One should look at those figures with care. First, do these take population into account?
Second, one must connect with the previous administration’s figure, to see whether the trend continued or changed.
Third, if the trend changed, really why? Can we always credit or blame the administration?
Stagflation was a systemic thing, caused by the entrenched expectation of inflation. Violet, a Carter appointee, choked off inflation by raising interest rates and variation the recession that was part of the reason Carter lost to Reagan.
I believe Carter understood this and approved of it in spite of it costing him politically. One of the many reasons I think Carter was the second best president of the 20th century.
I assume that you mean Paul Volcker.
Don’t forget that while Obama was president, Republicans deliberately tried to cripple the economy so they could place the blame on Obama. That was the whole “sequester” deal.