Either Barack Obama landed us in this mess, or he was a leader ill prepared to lead the United States through a unique economic time. It took seven years for the Federal Reserve to muster enough courage to raise interest rates. All throughout Obama’s term in office, Americans waited for the economy to reach a tipping point and grow at the rate that it did during the second half of the 1900s — 3.6%. Instead, it has been struggling along at 2% growth. Now, economists are saying this might be as good as it’s going to get. Chief U.S. Economist at Deutsche Bank Joseph LaVorgna told The Wall Street Journal, “To tell a story of 3% growth at this point — it’s not that it can’t happen, but it’s unlikely.” Instead, it might be better to start bracing for the economy to cycle into a recession. Before the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the December Jobs Report at the beginning of this month, Lance Roberts, who is the chief investment strategist with Clarity Financial, told MarketWatch that the monthly jobs report, the pulse of the U.S. economy, might not be the best measure for the nation’s economic health. “It is a lagging indictor and the Fed’s own data of leading labor indicators point that it began to roll over last year,” Roberts said. “At this point, we are probably closer to the next recession, possibly by the end of 2016 or early 2017.” There could be two factors affecting the nation’s economy. First, the number of people in the workforce is shrinking. Second, the economy is different than it was 20 or 30 years ago. We had no Internet, and no need for a glut of coding jobs. This was enough for the big-statist economic planners of the world to mismanage the economy.