when the last seven recessions lasted an average of 18 months.
That’s because those seven recessions—and the five previous to those dating back to the '37-'38 recession—were all typical business cycle recessions. The Great Recession of 2007-09 was, by huge contrast, a general worldwide financial collapse—something not seen since the Great Depression. It’s a simple, established fact that financial collapses take much longer to recover from than normal business cycle recessions.
While most economists who aren’t hiding up the ass of the Republican Party openly acknowledge that the stimulus package that Congress passed during Obama’s first term was significantly smaller than it should have been, the other fact you’re not mentioning is that it took over $700 billion to prop up the teetering financial markets and institutions—money that otherwise could have gone towards a direct stimulus. The notion that we should have just let all the financial institutions die and everything would have been fine is farcical.
I don’t agree with every economic or fiscal decision that Obama was able to make; I think he erred in not making a much more aggressive pitch for a larger stimulus package, and should have been much more forceful in communicating the fact that the stimulus package the Republicans agreed to was only enough to stop imminent collapse, and that it was not going to help the economy recover nearly as quickly as the nation expected or wanted. However, considering the open, overt, and gleefully unapologetic obstructionism that the GOP engaged in even before Obama took the oath of office, the idea that he alone could have fashioned a much greater economic package to directly aid the African American community is a highly selective view of reality.
It’s an unfortunate fact that poor people, regardless of their color or ethnic background, are far more likely to suffer crippling economic losses in hard times if for no other reason they have no financial cushion and few financially advantaged social connections to help them through the worst part. The statistics for the slow economic recovery of African Americans are, I’d bet, similar in nature to those for poor Hispanics and poor white Americans as well.
"Even the timing of austerity over the current recovery is
fairly easy to pinpoint in actions undertaken by Republicans in
Congress. The Obama administration championed and signed the ARRA during
the recession in early 2009, and the law led to a sharp uptick in
government spending that persisted throughout the early stages of the
recovery.
Through the end of 2010 (when the ARRA had mostly petered out), total
government spending per capita was not that different than in previous
recoveries (and actually rose more rapidly than in previous cycles
during the recession phase). But in 2011 Republicans in the House of
Representatives demanded spending cuts as a precondition for raising the
debt ceiling, a vote that had historically been pro-forma (the ceiling
has been raised 78 times just since 1962). The resulting Budget Control
Act of 2011 has significantly reduced the growth of discretionary
spending. Both in word and deed, Republican lawmakers have embraced and
enforced fiscal austerity, and the result has been the most discouraging
recovery on record.
Conclusion
The recovery since 2009 has been historically slow, and the
disappointing pace can be explained entirely by the fiscal austerity
imposed by Republicans in Congress.
Of course, other national policymakers are not completely blameless.
While the Federal Reserve pushed beyond the bounds of conventional
monetary policy to fight the recession and aid recovery, there are
reasons to think that it could have done more. The Obama administration
issued several calls for more expansionary fiscal policy (like the
American Jobs Act of 2010), but it had no unilateral power to pass more
expansionary policy. Yet it could have made a louder and more consistent
case that the slow recovery had concrete, identifiable roots in
decisions made by Congress. Had the Obama administration made such a
powerful case for why austerity was hampering growth, it could have
educated the public and potentially helped build support for more
sensible policy the next time the United States faces a recession.
But these caveats about the Fed and the Obama administration are
mostly quibbling. By far the biggest drag on growth throughout the
recovery from the Great Recession has been the fiscal policy forced upon
us by Republican lawmakers in Congress and austerity-minded state
legislatures and governors."
It just seemed so much more succinct than the rest of those doing battle with him/her.