Obama’s stimulus package was largely ridiculed by the right wing for a decade now. I remember seeing Facebook posts about “The Obama stimulus was a disaster” and how we all “suffered in the Obama years.”

There are two big differences between the Obama stimulus and the Trump stimulus.

Obama didn’t crash the economy under his watch. The economy crashed before he took office. Bush initiated the stimulus, and Obama just carried it forward. Then the stock market went from 7949 when Obama took office to 19827 when he passed the baton to Trump. The bull market was steady for eight years and kept going up.

This continued under Trump. But Trump didn’t turn the economy around, Trump just kept it moving where it was already going, and via deregulation and tax cuts put more fuel on the fire. There is fundamentally nothing wrong with that, except that the massive debt we took on to finance these tax cuts will come to hurt us – long after Trump is gone.

Trump then took credit, called the Obama years a failure, which in reality just set him up to win. But now, Trump’s economy crashed, and as I write this we have no idea how bad it will get.

The pattern so far in my adult life:

Republicans drive up the debt and occasionally tank the market. Democrats then dig out, actually reduce the deficit, and rally the market. Both Clinton and Obama left office with the market at all-time highs.

Bush left office in financial catastrophe.

Trump – that’s anyone’s guess. How is your 401k doing right now?