Did Obama make the economy worse? Not according to most statistics

By NBC's Mark Murray

Over the past two days, Mitt Romney has resurrected this claim hitting President Obama: He has made the economy worse.

Yesterday, when receiving Donald Trump's endorsement, Romney said: “He’s frequently telling us that he did not cause the recession, and that’s true. But he made it worse.”

And today, according to NBC's Garrett Haake, he said something similar: "This has been a tough time. And I know the president didn't cause this downturn -- this recession. But he didn't make it better, either. He made it worse. He made it worse because instead of focusing his energy on the economy and getting people back to work, he used his mandate being elected-- he used that to put through a series of programs that he and his base and his friends thought were important but frankly made it harder for our economy to recover. And so we've suffered."

However, most of the economic numbers don't support Romney's claim.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/03/10312358-did-obama-make-the-economy-worse-not-according-to-most-statistics

** Note to mods: I combined the italicized sub-paragraphs with the leads rather than display them as in the sourced article. Makes it more readable IMO