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Former President Obama praised the Biden administration for driving unemployment to historic lows.
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The jobs boom is helping many Americans afford to feed, house and care for their families, he said.
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Obama reflected on the financial crisis and explained why he did not punish those who caused it.
Many pundits have criticized the Biden administration’s economic policies for fueling historic inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at a record pace and paving the way for a painful recession. Still, the jobs created have been a boon for many Americans, former President Barack Obama said.
“A tight job market means that there are currently a lot of families who can afford groceries even with inflation, that their children live in a fairly stable household, that at Christmas there is a gift under the fir tree – and a lot of it has to do with policies that have helped support the economy and encourage a tight labor market,” Obama recently told Hasan Minhaj on the comedian’s YouTube channel.
“Now maybe that’s weird, maybe that’s not sexy, that’s not as cool as talking about the arrival of fascism,” Obama joked. But the jobs boom could convince some jaded Americans to vote, he noted.
President Biden echoed Obama’s message during a speech in Chicago on Wednesday. He noted that unemployment fell from over 6% when he took office to less than 4%, and that he stayed there for the longest time in half a century.
The Biden administration’s spending helped push inflation to a 40-year high last year, prompting the Fed to raise interest rates from virtually zero last spring to over 5% today. Higher rates can dampen price growth by encouraging saving over spending and increasing borrowing costs, but they can also slow the economy, increase unemployment and the risk of recession.
Obama’s point is that for now at least, the so-called Bidenomics has boosted employment, helping more Americans cover their food and housing costs and support their children.
Looking back
Obama came to the defense of his own administration during a recent episode of “The Ax Files” podcast.
After the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, Obama considered allowing the reckless banks that caused the bankruptcy and their shareholders to lose their money, as an act of “Old Justice”. Will”. However, he acknowledged the impact punishing them would likely have on the wider economy.
“What you were going to end up seeing was that the financial system was going to keep locking up, and you were going to go into a depression where the 99% – it was all going to come crashing down on them,” the former president said.
Obama acknowledged that it would have been politically and psychologically satisfying to punish bad actors, but noted that it was easier said than done.
“In some cases, by the way, we would have gladly prosecuted certain people,” he said. “But it turned out that in a lot of those cases, people weren’t breaking the law. It’s just that the game itself was rigged.”
“There were no laws on the books that would allow someone who helped cause this crisis to walk around,” he added.
Read the original article on Business Insider