JOHN MERLINE, 2/28/2017

In a curtain raiser for President Trump's address to Congress this week, the New York Times tried to compare Trump's bumpy start to President Obama's supposedly "impressive" one.

But in doing so, the Times wildly distorts what actually happened in Obama's first month in office.

"Despite his lament that he was handed 'a mess' by President Barack Obama," the article, written by three Times' reporters, says, "Trump inherited a low unemployment rate, a lack of international crises requiring immediate attention and majorities in both houses of Congress."

"By contrast," the story goes on, "when Mr. Obama took office, the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month, and the global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse. By the time he stepped up to the rostrum for his first joint congressional address on Feb. 24, 2009, he had already accrued an impressive string of accomplishments, including the passage of a massive stimulus bill through the Democratic-controlled Congress, a gender pay-parity act, a children's health insurance law and executive actions that would ultimately help stabilize the financial and automotive sectors. With the prospect of a second Great Depression still high, Mr. Obama sought to rally the country."

That's a nice bit of revisionist history. Let's review:

"With the prospect of a second Great Depression still high."

This is depiction of events makes Obama look like the hero whose smart and swift interventions prevented another Depression. But it's not true.

The economy had already started to stabilize before Obama was sworn in, as indicated by monthly real GDP numbers compiled by Macroeconomic Advisers. The worst monthly declines were behind us before Obama was sworn in, and the recession officially ended just five months after he took office, but before most of his stimulus and other policies could have much of an impact.

What's more, an analysis of what ended the recession by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi credited the $700 billion TARP program — signed into law by President Bush — and aggressive actions taken by the Fed — starting in 2008 — as being "substantially more powerful" in bringing the recession to an end than anything Obama did.

As to job losses, those also started to dissipate well before the bulk of Obama's stimulus money had been spent.

"The global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse."

Not quite. As Money magazine explained last year: "The Bush administration's response (to the financial crisis) was rapid and smart. With banks about to melt down, the Treasury Department began buying up risky mortgage bonds, taking them out of banks' hands and assuring investors around the world that whatever happened, U.S. banks would be able to pay their debts." Fed actions had also stabilized the industry before Obama arrived.

"He had already accrued an impressive string of accomplishments."

The Times own list of "accomplishments" in Obama's first month belies this claim. The stimulus was little more than the collection of long-standing Democratic spending wish lists, the combined effect of which failed to stimulate the economy.

Likewise, Democrats in Congress had been pushing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program before Obama set foot in the White House. (Bush vetoed the CHIP bill twice.) Their passage can hardly be called Obama accomplishments.

The Times also mentions "executive actions that would ultimately help stabilize the financial and automotive sectors," but doesn't list them. Probably because there weren't any such actions to speak of.

In fact, two of Obama's initial executive orders harmed the auto industry by targeting it for new and costly tailpipe emissions and fuel economy mandates. (Also not mentioned by the Times is the fact that Bush had already handed GM and Chrysler billions of dollars in emergency loans to keep them afloat.)

His later "Cash for Clunkers" has been dismissed as a complete failure. And his intervention into the bankruptcy proceeding for GM and Chrysler mainly benefited the unions.

As for the financial industry, the only big move Obama made in his first month was to sign an order imposing a $500,000 salary cap for executives at companies getting bailout money, while blasting the industry for "a culture of narrow self-interest."

That might have appealed to populist sentiment, but hardly helped stabilize the industry. What's more, the massive Dodd-Frank "financial reform" bill Obama eventually signed has failed to achieve its main goal of making the banking system safer, according to former Obama administration economic advisor Larry Summers.

Journalists love to say that they write the "first draft" of history, which is basically an excuse for getting a lot of facts wrong in the rush to report on fast-changing events.

But what's the excuse for getting the second, third, fourth or fifth draft of history wrong?

http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017...-untouched.html