So, just how bad is the U.S. economic recovery?

Over the past sev­eral months, much has been said about how weak the U.S. recov­ery has been fol­low­ing the Great Reces­sion. Often, the pres­i­dency of Barack Obama is mea­sured accord­ing to how the econ­omy com­pares to that of pres­i­dents of the past, par­tic­u­larly Ronald Rea­gan. While such com­par­isons have pos­si­ble weak­nesses, the nature of the busi­ness cycles “inher­ited” by these two pres­i­dents is some­what similar.