Courtesy of Pam Martens.
The September 23, 2013 cover of Time Magazine was adorned with the iconic Wall Street bull in a party hat, with celebratory confetti floating from the sky. In sleek bold type, Time declared, “How Wall Street Won – Five Years After the Crash, It Could Happen All Over Again.”
President Obama was so nonplused with the cover and the dire prophecy that he took to the airwaves, challenging the assertion with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week. Here’s the exchange from the official ABC transcript:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: This– this weekend, fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman. A lot of people say that was the acceleration.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Yeah.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Accelerated the financial crisis. Five years out, let’s take stock. You know, I’m lookin’ at the cover of Time Magazine this week. It says, “How Wall Street Won.” And we’ve got polls showing that, you know, two thirds of the country still think we’re going in the wrong direction, think the economy is no more secure. What do you say to those Americans who think Wall Street is winning but they’re not?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, let’s think about where we were five years ago. The economy was on the verge of a great depression. In some ways, actually, the economic data and– the collapse of the economy was worse than what happened– in the 1930s. And we came in, stabilized the situation. We’ve now had 42 straight months of growth, seven and a half million new jobs created, 500,000 jobs in manufacturing, 370,000 jobs in an auto industry that– had completely collapsed. The banking system works. It is giving loans to companies who can get credit. And so we have seen, I think undoubtedly, progress across the board. The housing market– has recovered. But what is also true is we’re not near where we need to be. And– part of it has to do with a whole bunch of long term trends in the economy, where– the gains that we’ve made in– in productivity and people working harder have all accrued to the– people at the very top, will average–
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