Kevin Duffy rates modern day presidents and Hoover

Hoover - Inherited the Roaring '20s bubble, made it 10x worse when the bubble burst with all kinds of big government solutions. He also added fuel to a global trade war... not good. 

Reagan - Talk about luck. Debt levels had fallen from 100% of GDP after WWII to 25%. Fed chairman Paul Volcker had already started to rein in inflation with has high interest rate policy. Carter had begun the deregulation wave. The Soviet Union was falling apart. If anything, Reagan squandered much of this bounty and set the nation on a course of debt (he was the first president to see the national debt go over $1 trillion). Overrated. 

Clinton - Another lucky president. He inherited the peace dividend as Soviet socialism unraveled. That was largely squandered. The Greenspan Fed would later blow a dot-com bubble on his watch. This fattened the government's coffers with capital gains tax receipts, leading to a surplus. The economic numbers were an illusion, not nearly as good as they appear. 

Bush II - Inherited a bursting tech bubble. Made things worse with his aggressive military response to 9/11. Then he allowed the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed to blow another bubble, this time in housing and credit. Bush II was a typical big government RINO who admired the big government FDR. He wanted to be a war president: mission accomplished. 

Obama - Good timing, coming in AFTER the Bush II housing bubble burst. He reacted with big government "stimulus" and an aggressive Fed, blowing the current everything bubble. 

Trump - Inherited the everything bubble, allowed the Yellen/Powell Fed to blow it even bigger. The Bush II/Obama bailouts/stimulus paled next the those in 2020 to fight state government lockdowns in the face of a bad case of the flu. Trump was a big spender, but pretty good on regulations. 

Biden - Inherits the mother of all messes. Debt/GDP is over 100%. Boomers are now tapping into entitlements. For 40 years, politicians kicked the can down the road on debt, deficits and social security. Now the bills are coming due and they're landing right in Biden's lap. Of course he was in DC nearly all of those 40 years. All he can do is prove, again, the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Biden could very well go down as Hoover II. 

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, November 8, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on the false narrative of racism in America

The claim that the United States is a racist society is thus completely at variance with reality. It is simply not true. One of the countless examples one could mention to illustrate this is the spectacular rise of Barack Obama who was elected to the highest office in America even though his prior accomplishments would – in the words of one commentator – barely fill the back of a postage stamp. A community organizer with a past about which he did not want to speak, Mr. Obama’s main qualification for becoming President of the United States was apparently the fact that his skin was black. Needless to say, the bulk of the votes that catapulted Mr. Obama into office was cast by white people. Could anything like this ever happen in a racist country?

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "The Real Target of 'Anti-Racism' Protests: Western Civilization and its Values," LewRockwell.com, August 17, 2020

President Obama on Ben Bernanke and Fed policy

They're going to be making sure that they keep an eye on inflation, that they're not encouraging some of the bubbles that we've seen in our economy that have resulted in busts.

~President Obama, Reuters, Oct 2, 2013

Obama says Congress causes unemployment

There is no shortage of ideas to put people to work right now. What is needed is action on the part of Congress.

~Barack Obama, president, United States of America, speech given at Cannon Falls, Minnesota, August 15, 2011

Barack Obama argues against his 2011 national debt policy in 2006

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

~ Barack Obama, then senator from Illinois, arguing against raising the US debt ceiling, March 20, 2006

John Malone on the incompetent Barack Obama

I don't think he should have been elected in the first place. I think he's incompetent. But now, I've thought that of the last couple presidents. [Obama's administration] is all academics and lawyers. I'm afraid that our real problems are systemic and long‑term. And lawyers are primarily trained in fighting over the pie, not making the pie bigger. And this country definitely needs to think about making the pie bigger.

~John Malone, chairman, Liberty Media, WSJ, July 21st, 2010

Marc Faber on President Obama

Mr. Obama will do everything he can to get re-elected and that may involve some very bad decisions. He is like a roman emperor; he just gives out bread to the mob and produces games and circuses.

~ Marc Faber, "Gold Run not Over," Kitco, April 23, 2010

Barack Obama on the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

One year later, it is largely thanks to the recovery act that a second depression is no longer a possibility.

There has never been a program of this scale, moved at this speed, that has been enacted as effectively and as transparently as the Recovery Act.

~ President Barack Obama, "Obama says stimulus bill saved troubled economy," Associated Press, February 17, 2010

Barack Obama on the size of government

The question that we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.

~ President Barack Obama, inaugural address, 2009

Obama on bank CEO bonuses

I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen. I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.

While an extraordinary amount of money for Main Street, there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.

~ President Barack Obama, "Obama Doesn’t ‘Begrudge’ Bonuses for ‘Savvy’ Blankfein," Bloomberg, February 9, 2010

Obama on TARP bailout

There has rarely been a less loved or more necessary emergency program than TARP, which as galling as the assistance to banks may have been indisputably helped prevent a collapse of the entire financial system.

"Obama to extend bailout fund, use a chunk for deficit", CNBC.com, December 10, 2009,

David Kramer on Barack Obama winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

If the economically-ignorant Paul Krugman could win the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics while continuing to promote the exact same economic policies that got us into our current economic mess, why shouldn’t Barack Obama win the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for escalating an unjust war in Afghanistan plus starting a potential new war by already bombing Pakistan (something even his predecessor didn’t have the “pleasure” of doing)?

What did George Orwell write in 1984? War is Peace? I guess so—at least according to the Nobel Peace Prize committee members.

~ David Kramer, "First Krugman, Now Obama," LewRockwell.com Blog, October 9, 2009

Kevin Duffy on Barack Obama's economic IQ

Barack Obama may know how to give a speech or win an election, but he doesn’t know economics. Neither did practically every president from William McKinley to George W. Bush. Neither do most of the mainstream media, political pundits, and voting population who expect their government to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Obama Knows...," LewRockwell.com, September 14, 2009

Obama calls bottom in stocks

What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal, if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.

~ President Barack Obama, "Obama Says Now May Be Good Time to Invest in Stocks," Bloomberg, March 3, 2009

Barack Obama on economic stimulus for the "public good"

All of us in Washington must remember that we’re here to work for the American people. And if we drag our feet and fail to act, this crisis will turn into a catastrophe.

~ President Barack Obama, February 6, 2009

Barack Obama on the causes of the economic crisis

Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

~ President Barack Obama, Inauguration speech, January 20, 2009

Barack Obama on financial bailouts and transparency

Let's lay out very specifically some of the things that we are going to do with the next $350 billion of money. And I think that we can regain the confidence of both Congress and the American people that this is not just money that is being given to banks without any strings attached and nobody knows what happens, but rather that it is targeted very specifically at getting credit flowing again to businesses and families.

I think that when you look at how we have handled the home foreclosure situation and whether we've done enough in terms of helping families on the ground who may have lost their homes because they lost their jobs or because they got sick, we haven't done enough there.

~ President-Elect Barack Obama, interview on ABC's "This Week," "Obama: $350b bailout needs to help people," Associated Press, January 11, 2009

(Among the things under consideration by Obama aides and congressional Democrats are limiting executive pay at institutions that receive the money and forcing such institutions to get rid of any private aircraft they may own or lease.)

Charley Reese on Barack Obama and gun control

There is not a stupid idea about gun control that Obama hasn't supported either verbally or with his vote.

The Second Amendment was not written for duck hunters. It was written for self-defense and for defense against tyranny. Obama ought to talk to some of the people who survived the civil-rights revolution about how they stayed up all night with their private firearms to protect their families. He ought to research the old Jim Crow laws, which banned blacks from owning certain kinds of firearms.

~ Charley Reese, "Obama Won't Win It All," LewRockwell.com, June 9, 2008

Barack Obama on raising taxes

Bartiromo: Why raise taxes in a slowdown? Isn't that going to put a further strain on people?

Obama: There's no doubt that anything I do is going to be premised on what the economic situation is when I take office next January. The thing you can be assured of is that I'm not going to make these decisions based on ideology. I'm not a dogmatist. My opponents to the right would like to paint me as this wild-eyed liberal, but I believe in the market. I believe in entrepreneurship. I believe in capitalism, and I want to do what works. One of the problems with the Bush Administration has been its rigidness when it comes to economic policy. It doesn't matter what the problem is, they'll say tax cuts. Trade deficit? Tax cuts. Slowdown in manufacturing? Tax cuts. At a certain point, if you've only got one arrow in the quiver, you're going to have problems.

~ Barack Obama, "Barack Obama On Taxes and Why He Is The Best Manager," BusinessWeek, April 14, 2008