Notes from a diehard

Alan Blinder, writing in the WSJ, argues that the economy is in much better shape than it was when Barack Obama came into office:

Of course, that does not prove that the president's policies caused the unexpected improvement. Maybe our luck just turned, and the economy would have done even better under a laissez-faire approach. (A few diehards still argue that FDR's policies worsened the Great Depression!)

Here is Jonathan Bean, summarizing Robert Whaples survey of economists and historians: