From Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe, The weakest economic recovery in modern times:

The Great Recession formally ended in June 2009, just five months after Obama’s inauguration. Nevertheless, polls repeatedly find that large swaths of voters believe the US economy is still suffering from recession. They may be wrong on the technical definition. But they aren’t nearly as wrong on the essence of the matter as the president, who insists the economy is coming up roses.

“The economy, by every metric, is better than when I came into office,” Obama told Jon Stewart during his last appearance on “The Daily Show.” Even PolitiFact, which no one has ever accused of leaning Republican, rated that whopper “Mostly False.”

In truth, a depressing array of “metrics” shows an economy that has yet to get back on its feet, notwithstanding the unprecedented sums spent by Washington in the form of “stimulus,” bailouts, and gargantuan budget deficits.

Six million more Americanslive in poverty today than when Obama was elected. Median household income (in real dollars) was no higher at the end of 2015 than at the end of 2007. The labor force participation rate — the share of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one — has sunk to 62.5 percent, a level not seen since the Carter administration. Since the recession ended, the economy has grown at an annual rate of just 2.2 percent. That is way below average for post-recession recoveries. Indeed, this has been the weakest economic recovery in modern times.

It should have been one of the strongest.

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