Who deserves credit is one thing. Lying about the recent past is another.

As is often the case, the argument is made emotively but there are the bones of logic and evidence. From Economic Boom: Media Rewrite History To Credit Obama Instead Of Trump by the Editors.

Within economics there is a long established challenge that the lead time between new policies and visible outcomes can be measured in years rather than months. So of course, policies pursued in one administration have a tendency to spill over, for good or ill, into the following administration. The new administration of course is in its turn launching new policies and so if there are beneficial outcomes from the earlier administration, those get snuffled up as short term outcomes from new policies which are yet half-baked. Its the nature of the beast.

It is also true, though, that sometimes either circumstances have changed or policies can be better targeted/executed in a way that can lead to dramatic improvements.

We won't know for a long time where the balance will fall between what carried over from the Obama administration into the Trump administration. Obama pursued policy, fiscal and monetary policies that frequently were subversive of growth, leading to multi-year predictions of "recovery summers" when growth was finally going to take off and never did. Towards the end of Obama's administration, the received wisdom in many policy circles was that 0.5-2.0% productivity growth was the new normal for the US and for developed nations worldwide. Obama's policies were not to blame, it was the new reality.

The investment, growth, labor force participation rate, unemployment rate, stock market numbers are all so positive that it puts the lie to those claiming the new normal is less than 2% growth. But what is causing this windfall of growth? New policies? The promise of new policies not yet delivered? Changes in global economic tail winds?

In order, maybe; probably; almost certainly not. I suspect that perhaps the biggest part is simply a clearly understood change in goals. The old administration wanted to focus on fairness and redistribution, manifested in micro-managing the economy, focusing on growth suppressing policies, especially with regard to energy, ensuring that the productive were paying more taxes ("their fair share"), building up government consumption programs, etc.

The new administration is pursuing different goals with great simplicity and clarity. The message is simply that economic growth is the priority and assumes that increasing economic growth will benefit everyone eventually. I suspect that clarity and the expectations that go with it are perhaps the dominant driver of the new administration growth.

The IBD editors are dwelling on that stale argument of how do you slice the credit cake between old and new administrations. But they call attention to something I think is even more interesting. The willingness of the media to rewrite history that is recent and accessible.

Growth: The stronger the economy gets under President Trump, the more desperate his critics are to hand credit over to Obama. Even if that entails changing the past.

A recent New York Times story says it all: "An Economic Upturn Begun Under Obama Is Now Trump's To Tout."

The article begins by admitting that "by nearly every standard measure, the American economy is doing well," then spends the next 1,400 words arguing that the current good times have nothing to do with Trump's economic agenda.

The economy, reporter Patricia Cohen declares, "is following the upward trajectory begun under President Barack Obama."

Upward trajectory?

We seem to recall that the economy was stagnating in 2016 after the weakest recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.

In fact, The New York Times itself described Obama's economy this way in August 2016: "For three quarters in a row, the growth rate of the economy has hovered around a mere 1%. In the last quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, the economy expanded at feeble annual rates of 0.9% and 0.8%, respectively. The initial reading for the second quarter of this year, released on Friday, was a disappointing 1.2%."

GDP growth decelerated in each of the last three quarters of 2016.

And on January 27, 2017, after the government reported that GDP growth for all 2016 was a mere 1.6% — the weakest in five years — the Times announced that "President Trump's target for economic growth just got a little more distant."

That same month, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast growth this year would be just 1.9%.

There were other signs of stagnation as well. Stocks had flatlined in 2016, with major indexes down slightly. Real median household income dropped that year, according to Sentier Research.

Growth had been so worrisomely slow throughout Obama's two terms in office that journalists started warning about "secular stagnation." They said the country was in a period of long, sustained, slow growth resulting from slow population and productivity growth.

In August 2016, the Times declared that "the underlying reality of low growth will haunt whoever wins the White House."

Predictions of Slow Growth

The next month, CBS News reported that "with U.S. economic growth stuck in low gear for several years, it's leading many economists to worry that the country has entered a prolonged period where any expansion will be weaker than it has been in the past."

In short, there was no upward trajectory to the economy on anyone's radar when Trump took office.

This is the second time this week that I have noticed the New York Times making a big claim that is factually inconsistent with their own reporting: reporting that is a matter of record. I posted earlier It's like claiming you're eighteen while handing over a driver's license which proves you are fourteen in which a NYT reporter makes claims about the state of knowledge about climate change in 1979 which are easily refuted by the NYT's own reporting and headlines in 1979.

Why lie about a past that you documented yourself and which everyone can so easily find? They are not stupid people but they are sure acting in a way that makes little sense.