What he's saying: The former president told NYT podcast "The Ezra Klein Show" that it's "hard to just underscore how much the bank bailouts just angered everyone, including me," following the 2008 financial crisis, which he noted stimulated a "long, slow recovery." "Although the economy recovers technically quickly, it's another five years before we're really back to people feeling like, ‘OK, the economy is moving and working for me," Obama told host Ezra Klein. "Let's say a Democrat, a Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton had immediately succeeded me, and the economy suddenly has 3% unemployment, I think we would have consolidated the sense that, ‘Oh, actually these policies that Obama put in place worked.'