Just as Obama’s economic agenda is underappreciated because of Republican obstruction, it has also benefited from support from the Federal Reserve. The Fed slashed short-term interest rates to zero in 2009 to spur consumers to spend and businesses to invest—in other words, to fill the hole in demand. That too proved insufficient, so, under the leadership of Ben Bernanke, the Fed used unconventional monetary policy tools like large-scale asset purchases—buying Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities—to lower long-term rates. These policies have undoubtedly been a major reason why the U.S. has recovered much faster than the Eurozone. The European Central Bank made numerous policy mistakes over the past few years, most notably raising interest rates in 2011.
Some conservative economists believe that the Fed really deserves credit for any economic improvement and that Obama’s policies—and the stimulus in particular—were irrelevant to the recovery. Under this theory, the Fed would have adopted looser monetary policy if the stimulus never passed. In other words, the stimulus doesn’t deserve credit for spurring stronger growth, because that growth would have happened no matter what, thanks to the Fed. This is known as monetary offset.
But this view ignores the political constraints within the Fed. After all, both Bernanke and current chair Janet Yellen have derided the spending cuts in the sequester and asked for help from policymakers. Fed policymakers have even admitted that full monetary offset isn’t real. That’s not to say that the Fed would have adopted the same policies with or without the stimulus. But it’s equally absurd to argue that the stimulus was ineffective.