Narayana Kocherlakota, Columnist

Obama's Economic Disappointment

This is not the best that America can do.

April 28, 2016 at 7:21 PM UTC

Narayana Kocherlakota is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015.

Don't despair.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

President Barack Obama thinks Americans don’t properly appreciate the benefits of his economic policies -- a view he most recently expressed in an interview with the New York Times. Isolating the effects of any president’s policies is close to impossible. That said, it’s not hard to see why many people are disappointed with the performance of the economy during Obama’s time in office.

In January 2009, at the beginning of Obama’s first term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a 10-year forecast for the U.S. economy, including such indicators as unemployment, gross domestic product, the budget deficit, government debt and interest rates. Here’s a table comparing the CBO’s expectations for the year 2015 to what has actually happened: