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Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Five years after the onset of the worst financial collapse in our history, we still have not recovered. President Obama used the fifth anniversary of the financial collapse to remind Americans of the “perfect storm” he inherited, and of the steps he took to save the economy from free fall, rescue the auto industry and save the financial system.
He would understandably like a little credit for the 7.5 million new private sector jobs, the passage of comprehensive healthcare reform and the changes in the tax code that left those earning over $450,000 paying a bit more in taxes.
Much was done, but in the end, far too little. The economy has not recovered the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession. The rate of job creation has barely been able to keep up with new entrants into the labor force. Over 20 million people are still in need of full-time work. The top 1 percent has captured virtually all of the rewards of growth coming out of the collapse, while the majority of Americans have been left out of the recovery. Wages for most Americans aren’t keeping up with costs. The big banks are more concentrated and larger than ever. Derivatives remain a largely unregulated weapon of financial mass destruction.
In his statement Monday, President Obama acknowledged this reality. The trends that were undermining the middle class before the Great Recession, he noted, have grown worse since the downturn. “We’ve cleared away the rubble,” the president said, but we have yet to build “a new foundation” for growth, good jobs and widely shared prosperity.
Obama used this backdrop to set the terms of the coming debate on the budget. The Republican right is once more gearing up to hold America hostage, threatening to shut down the government or default on our debts to get its way.
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
