Just because mortgages exist, doesn’t mean sketchy bankers have to make overvalued securities of them in outlandishly confusing ways meant to deceive banks into buying their overvalued product. If we’d had sensible financial regulation, as we did before the 80s, or reasonable oversight of securities practices during the Bush administration, none of this would have happened.
I don’t believe it’s true that conservative economic policies are more successful economically in the US. First of all, such policies don’t really exist — the conservative like Reagan and Bush II say one thing (fiscal conservatism!), yet do the opposite (cut taxes and raise spending, driving up deficits to record highs).
Second, the highest periods of economic growth were from the 1940s to the late 1960s, when we had FDR-style economic policies (Eisenhower didn’t change much), and the 90s under Clinton (and the first thing Clinton did after getting elected was dramatically raise taxes on the rich).
The millions of jobs that were lost because of the financial crisis that occurred under Bush II can’t be easily recovered. Most of them are gone for good. So I don’t think we can blame Obama for not magically recovering them all.
Anyway, if Obama had done what the conservative Republicans want — no stimulus, cut taxes on the rich and slash spending on the poor — we’d have an even worse recession or an even slower recovery. That said, I’m not a big Obama fan when it comes to economic policies — I don’t like a lot of things, like bailing out big banks and giving Wall Street insiders all the important policy positions.
You misunderstand — I wasn’t saying those European welfare states all have 8% unemployment. Many of them — like Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria — have unemployment rates between 3 and 6 percent. Not bad, given their aversion to Keynesian stimulus policies.
I don’t agree that there’s a consensus that US welfare state policies are unsustainable — that depends on our taxation system, which can be altered to produce additional revenue (whether that’s through sales taxes or income taxes or some other source.) A lot of the unsustainability talk is smoke and mirrors — social security, for example, is paid for from people’s paychecks, and is inherently sustainable, but the government raids the coffers for its convenience and then there ends up being a problem.