Conservative economist says Obama caused 2007 financial crisis – Even though he wasn’t in office yet!

According to conservative, supply-side economist Arthur Laffer, the 2007 financial crisis which led to a deep recession in the United States was caused by by the economic policies of Barack Obama, even though Obama didn’t take office until 2008.

Appearing on Fox News Monday evening, Laffer was discussing the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination. Laffer said a Sanders presidency would lead to a complete meltdown of the financial system:

“By giving to those who have a little bit less, you provide them with an alternative source of income, other than working, and they too will produce a little bit less. Now this is math. It’s not left-wing, right-wing, Republican, Democrat, it’s not liberal or conservative. It’s just plain economics.”

Laffer then went on a rant about the dangers of income redistribution:

“Whenever you redistribute income, you reduce total income, and that is what [Sanders is] doing, and I’m very afraid that if he were elected, we would have an enormous crash in the market. Now that crash would come in anticipation of his election, but it’s much like Obama, who I believe was the reason we had the Great Recession. As he got closer and closer to winning, the markets collapsed.”

Actually, a conservative Republican — George W. Bush — was president long before Obama even announced he was running for the White House. And the actual cause of the 2007 recession was a mortgage market that got inflated and became a giant bubble. Risky financial instruments were bundled by big banks such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and then sold to investors. When the mortgage bubble burst, it took down many banks and robbed millions of Americans with stock holdings of trillions, all because Wall Street put greed ahead of long-term stability.

Nice try, Dr. Laffer, but your theory is as bogus as the network you shared it with,

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