A Full Fact-Check of Niall Ferguson's Very Bad Argument Against Obama

[n2doc]

Matthew O'Brien



Celebrity historian Niall Ferguson doesn't like President Obama, and doesn't think you should either.

That's perfectly fine. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to disapprove of the president. Here's the big one: 8.3 percent. That's the current unemployment rate, fully three years on from the official end of the Great Recession. But rather than make this straightforward case against the current administration, Ferguson delves into a fantasy world of incorrect and tendentious facts. He simply gets things wrong, again and again and again. (A point my colleague James Fallows makes as well in a must-read.)

Here's a tour of some of the more factually challenged sections of Ferguson's piece.

"Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak."

Did you catch that little switcheroo? Ferguson concedes that stocks have done very well since January 2009, but then says that private sector payrolls have not since January 2008. Notice now? Ferguson blames Obama for job losses that happened a full year before he took office. The private sector has actually added jobs since Obama was sworn in -- 427,000 of them, to be exact. For context, remember that the private sector lost 170,000 jobs during George W. Bush's eight years.



Of course, it's not really fair to blame Obama -- or Bush -- for jobs lost in their first few months before their policies took effect. If we more sensibly look at private sector payrolls after their first six months in office, then Obama has created 3.1 million jobs and Bush created 967,000 jobs.


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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/a-full-factcheck-of-niall-fergusons-very-bad-argument-against-obama/261306/

[ibegurpard]

1. who?

[n2doc]

2. See link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021162164

Newsweek cover 'story'...hatchet job of the week on Obama.

[ibegurpard]

3. yeah, i know about it

and my point was who the fuck is Niall Ferguson?

[The Magistrate]

4. A Tory Twit, Sir

Once wrote a fairly decent work of history on the First World War, and had a useful insight concerning the value of looking into bond markets for influence on the course of history, but this has gone to his head, and he has lost it rather badly and begun comment on contemporary U.S. politics, where he is about as competent as Erikson or Corsi, failing even to rise to the level of out D. Brooks....

[BootinUp]

5. What an asshole.