Barack Obama’s presidency began at the height of the subprime mortgage fiasco in the housing market which occasioned a triple economic crisis: the worst recession since the Great Depression, a near collapse of the banking system, and an impending bankruptcy of America’s leading car manufacturers. The stock market had lost 40% of its value and unemployment would eventually reach 10%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The recession was addressed by the 1,073-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which was passed in the first month with “precisely zero Republican votes”<\/em> in the House and just three GOP votes in the Senate in spite of Obama’s heroic efforts to reach across the aisle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The housing crisis was countered by the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). The banking system held up following a bold formula of institutional stress tests carried out by the Federal Reserve. And the car industry survived with General Motors being restructured and Chrysler going into partnership with Fiat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Obama acknowledges that “my administration’s handling of the financial crisis still generates fierce debate<\/em>“. He explains that: “For many thoughtful critics … the fact that I had engineered a return to pre-crisis normalcy is precisely the problem – a missed opportunity if not an outright betrayal”<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He is honest with readers: “I wonder whether I should have been bolder in those early months”<\/em>. But he concludes: “my first hundred days in office revealed a basic strand of my political character. I was a reformer, conservative in temperament if not in vision”<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barack Obama’s presidency began at the height of the subprime mortgage fiasco in the housing market which occasioned a triple economic crisis: the worst recession since the Great Depression, a near collapse of the banking system, and an impending bankruptcy of America’s leading car manufacturers. The stock market had lost 40% of its value and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26527"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26534,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26527\/revisions\/26534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}