You Americans have no Idea...

I don't pretend to know a lot about American politics and readily confess that most of my news on that subject comes from John Stewart.  But here is what I think I know.  The Democrats are like our Liberals here in Canada, and hold the middle-left ground.  The Republicans are like our Conservatives, and hold the middle-right ground.  The Tea Party is a faction within the Republicans holding the far-right ground and are analogous to what Liberal supporters here in Canada THINK the Conservatives stand for.

There is a newspaper clipping that keeps floating to the top of my Facebook feed that claims that many Canadians would love to have President Obama north of the border.  A lot of people seem to think that this was penned by a bona fide journalist, when in fact it is a simple letter to the editor.  There are a great number of points in the first paragraph that show just how good things are in the US because of president Obama.  But this is just a letter from an average citizen.  There's no guarantee of fact-checking.

So I thought I'd look at them point by point.

~ corporate profits are at record highs

Corporate America as a whole always makes a profit, even in the deepest recession.  And these profits continually grow year after year.  So it is not surprising that profits are at a record high.  Unless the country is in a recession, corporate profits will almost always be at record highs.  During the Bush administration (which started just before a small recession), corporate profits grew from $495 billion to $1.409 trillion -- or 185%.  Obama started his administration in the depths of a major recession and corporate profits have grown from a low of $671 billion to $1.842 trillion -- or 174%.  If you discount the ground lost during the recession, profits have only grown by 31% under Obama.

~ country is adding 200,000 jobs per month

This is true.  On average, the US recently has been adding 200,000 new jobs per month.  What this statistic doesn't tell you is that an almost equal number of new workers join the workforce each month.  In June 2014 191,000 new jobs were added, but 194,000 new workers were also added.  The majority of those jobs were part time or minimum wage food service and retail jobs.  Over the course of Bush's administration there were 130,000 jobs per month created.  Over the course of Obama's administration (excluding the 2009 recession year) there have been 131,000 jobs per month created.  Pretty much tells you right there that the president doesn't have much of an impact on job creation.

~ unemployment is below 6%

This is also true.  The current unemployment rate is 5.8%, down from 10% at the height of the recession but still above the 5.3% average unemployment rate that Bush enjoyed throughout his administration.  But wait.  If the number of new workers each month is outnumbering the number of jobs created, why is the unemployment rate still dropping?  Well, that's because the number of people not looking for any work has jumped sharply.  There are .8% more students, 2.9% more people on disability, and 2.6% more people are 'discouraged' workers.  This means they aren't looking for work because they don't believe there is any work for them.  Additionally, the number of people on non-veteran assistance has grown 13%.

~ gasoline prices are falling

True.  Gas prices have fallen from a high of 5.27 US$/gal back in June to 4.39 US$/gal today (November 13, 2014).  But that is still well above its 2.79 US$/gal mark at the beginning of Obama's administration.  The price of gasoline is directly tied to the world price of oil and is not something a government or president controls.

~ US GNP growth is best of OECD countries

This is blatantly false.  For one thing the OECD no longer tracks GNP but instead tracks Gross National Income (GNI) in accordance with SNA93.  The US government also does not track GNP and has used GDP as its primary measure of production since 1991.  US GDP growth is projected to be 3.4% for 2014.  This is behind Canada (3.5%), China (7.1%) and India (6.8%).  The US real GDP rate for 2013 was 4.6%, which ranked them 65th in the world.

~ dollar is at its strongest levels in years

No point in arguing this one.  It's true.  The US Dollar Index is at its highest point in nearly 5 years.

~ stock market is near record highs

In fact, the stock market as of my writing has posted 5 straight days of record highs.

~ there's no inflation

US inflation for the last 12 months has been around 1.7%.  It was as high as 3.0% in 2011 and has not been zero or negative since Oct 2009.  It has not been above 5% since 1990.

~ interest rates are the lowest in 30 years

Interest rates have risen a full point since as recently as 2012.  They were also lower at the beginning of the recession in 2008 and again in 2002.  The strengthening dollar and stock market mentioned above will likely lead to a rise in interest rates with some forecasts seeing it reaching 4.5% by the end of 2015.

~ US oil imports are declining

Indeed, the United State's dependency on foreign oil may drop below 6 million barrels a day by 2016.  This is because domestic oil production is increasing and there is a virtual ban on oil export.

~ US oil production is rapidly increasing

Oil production in the US is definitely on the rise and may hit 9 million barrels a day before the end of the year.  This is thanks almost entirely to newly accessible oil deposits through fracking.  Congratulations.

~ deficit is rapidly declining

The deficit has fallen sharply in the past few years and is expected to fall again next year.  However, later in the coming decade, if current laws on federal taxes and spending remain unchanged, revenues will grow only slightly while spending would increase more rapidly.  Trillion dollar deficits could be back by 2024.

~ the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money

I thought liberals tended to frown on this.

~ Obama brought soldiers home from Iraq

A little too early it seems.

~ and killed Osama bin Laden

He did, did he?  It wasn't the years of work by the CIA or the daring raid by Navy SEALs?