USA Today notes the cost of gasoline could be below $3 a gallon by the November election.

“Nationally, regular gasoline averages $3.47 a gallon, down 47 cents from this year’s high in April and well below the $5-a-gallon fears fanned earlier this year by energy speculators, Middle East tensions and oil refinery glitches that crimped supplies. Those issues appear to be over, at least for now.”

A new Bloomberg poll finds 45% of Americans say they are better off than at when President Obama took office compared with 36% who say they are worse off.

However, there are hints of unease in the findings: 32% of Americans say they’re hopeful about improvement in the economy, down from 37% in March. And 19% say they’re fearful, compared with 17% three months ago.

Bill Clinton said that President Obama’s economic recovery efforts were “beating the clock” historically in comparison to other economies that have been through similar tumult, the Boston Globe reports.

Said Clinton: “If you go back 500 years, whenever a country’s financial system collapses, it takes between five and 10 years to get back to full employment. If you go back for the last 200 years, when buildings had been widely owned by individuals and companies, if there’s a mortgage collapse, it almost always takes 10 years.”

He added: “He’s beating the clock, not behind it. Don’t listen to those Republicans. We are beating the clock.”

Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said that President Obama’s decision to bailout Chrysler and General Motors was actually Romney’s idea, The Hill reports.

Said Fehrnstrom: “His position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that. The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.”

The claim appears to be a shift from Mitt Romney’s November 2008 op-ed in the New York Times, headlined, “Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

The economic output of the United States grew at an annual rate of 2.2% in the first quarter of the year, easing from the prior quarter’s growth rate of 3%, the New York Times reports.

Reuters: “Although the details were mixed, the GDP
report offered a somewhat better picture of growth compared with the
fourth quarter, when inventory building accounted for nearly two thirds
of the economy’s growth. In the first quarter, demand from consumers
took up the slack.”

A USA Today survey of economists finds that “despite the headwinds of higher gas prices and Europe’s financial crisis” they think the U.S. economy will grow faster than expected this year.

Key findings: “The economy will grow 2.5% this year vs. their 2.3% forecast three months ago. Unemployment averaging 8% in the fourth quarter vs. 8.2% now.”

A new CNN/Opinion Research survey finds 43% of Americans
say things are going well in the country, up a whopping 19 points from August. That said, 57% say things are still
going badly. 

At a campaign event in Maryland, Mitt Romney credited President George W. Bush with keeping the country from a great depression in 2008, BuzzFeed reports.

Said Romney: “I keep hearing the president say he’s responsible for keeping the country out of a Great Depression. No, no, no, that was President George W. Bush and Hank Paulson.”

A new Bloomberg poll finds more Americans now say they are personally better off since President Obama took office than worse off, 38% to 36%, the first favorable reading for the president on that question since Bloomberg began asking in December 2010.

That said, Americans are still far from content, with 61% saying the U.S. is moving in the wrong direction.

The Fix has the play-by-play for how President Obama and Republicans with national aspirations are spinning the rising price of gas.

“All of the Republican criticism comes as the Obama Administration
takes note of the one-year anniversary of the release of the president’s
energy plan by issuing a progress report… Obama insists Republicans
are engaging in meaningless sloganeering even as they are unwilling to
revoke more than $4 billion in tax breaks for oil
companies… Republicans believe that Obama is putting ideology ahead of
the good of the American people, citing the rejection of the Keystone
XL pipeline as the most egregious example… The political onus for
action likely lies with the president. A CBS News poll conducted at the
end of last month showed that 54 percent of those tested said the
president could do ‘a lot’ about the price of gasoline, while just 34
percent said he could not.”

“I want regulators to see businesses and enterprises of all kinds as
their friends, and to encourage them and to move them along.”

— Mitt Romney, quoted by National Journal.

“I’m not going to go armchair quarterback it. I think there are alternative scenarios that could have worked also, but the point is, is that it’s history, and the important part is it was successful, we’re moving along, creating jobs.”

— Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), quoted by The Hill, defending President Obama’s bailout of the U.S. auto industry. The entire Republican presidential field has come out against the bailout.

Noam Scheiber has a memo from the early days of the Obama administration in which chief economist Christy Romer argued that a more substantial economic stimulus was needed. However, top economic adviser Larry Summers thought it politically impractical and made sure the larger recommendation was never shown to the president.

“When Romer showed Summers her $1.7-to-$1.8 trillion figure late the
week before the memo was due, he dismissed it as impractical. So Romer
spent the next day or two coming up with a reasonable compromise: $1.2
trillion. In a revised document that she sent Summers over the weekend,
she included the $1.2 trillion figure, along with two more limited
options: about $600 billion and about $850 billion.
At first, Summers gave her every indication that all three figures
would appear in the memo he was sending the president-elect. But with
less than twenty-four hours before the memo needed to be in Obama’s
hands, Summers informed her that he was inclined to strike the $1.2
trillion figure.”

Mitt Romney said that cutting spending slows growth in the economy — the “sort of comment was sure to raise the eyebrows of fiscal conservatives
in the GOP, who have long preached a message of fiscal restraint as a
path to economic growth,” NBC News reports.

Said Romney: “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy. So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”

It’s another fine example of a Kinsley gaffe.

On the day that General Motors posted a record $7.6 billion profit, the DNC uses a video to remind voters about Mitt Romney’s “let them go bankrupt” line.

[Read more…]

The U.S. economy “grew at its fastest pace in more than a year and a half in the fourth quarter, signaling that a sturdier recovery took hold despite troubles in other parts of the world,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services produced — grew at an annual rate of 2.8% between October and December… That is up from 1.8% growth in the third quarter and 1.3% in the second quarter.”

Just published: Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History by Michael Grabell.

The author concludes the stimulus package did some good and saved as many as 3 million jobs but the political legacy of the bill may be its most lasting effect.

The Federal Reserve downgraded its outlook for economic growth this year but is slightly more optimistic about the unemployment rate, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Fed expects the economy to grow between 2.2% and 2.7% this year. That’s down from November’s forecast of between 2.5% and 2.9%. But it sees unemployment falling as low as 8.2%, an improvement from November’s bottom rate of 8.5%.