Andrew Ross Sorkin
The economic meltdown that would define every aspect of Obama's economy came to a head well before he became president, of course, and so did the legislation that would be the basis for everything that came after.
In September 2008 - as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and AIG, the world's biggest insurance company, accepted a federal bailout - Senator John McCain of Arizona, in what was widely viewed as a political move, suspended his presidential campaign and called on Obama to rush back to Washington for a bipartisan meeting at the White House.
Wall Street's biggest fight with Obama was over the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which Obama signed into law in the summer of 2010.
The Saft America plant, a giant 235,000-square-foot mass of concrete, is a modern marvel: its roof covered in row upon row of solar panels, embodying the renewable future that the batteries manufactured within are meant to sustain.
Unemployment in Florida peaked at 11.2 percent in 2009, higher than the national average, and the state was a center for home foreclosures.
Whether a president can truly improve, or damage, an economy remains an open question.
The greatest economic power might in fact remain in the hands of the Federal Reserve. Economists credit the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates at historic lows with helping to pump up the economy and bring unemployment down.
Perhaps the biggest economic shift during Obama's presidency came from a piece of legislation that wasn't sold as such. On March 21, 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. It was Obama's boldest piece of legislation and the one that will most likely define him.
I would say that my whole career is effectively trying to be a storyteller within the context of financial news.
Debt, weve learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.Collection: Fire
Shareholders are sort of like cats; they get herded around, and they follow the leader. With the exception of a few activist shareholders, there are a very rare number of big, important, influential shareholders that like to step up and say there's a problem here, especially when they're making money.Collection: Cat
Unfortunately, I think it's very difficult to separate policy from politics. In a perfect world, in some instances you probably would want to. In other instances you'd probably say that the political element is important because it should, in a perfect world, match what the stakeholders need or want, or what the public is after.Collection: Thinking