If the author of the story, here, had bothered to read from the annual report of the St. Louis Federal Reserve to which he refers, and which adjusted the household net worth numbers for population growth and inflation from 2007, he would have observed that the maximum extent of the decline from which we have recovered 45% was something close to 27%. The helpful folks at the St. Louis Fed even provided a nice graph to make it easy to understand.
So, our net worth was never down 55% in the first place, and the anemic recovery we have experienced under Obama has brought us up only 45% from the 27% decline to which we had fallen. The dunderhead, no different from Rush Limbaugh nor any average high school graduate for the last forty years, incorrectly subtracted the 45% improvement from 100 to get 55, which shows he never learned the simplest thing about percentages in school.
As the graph clearly shows, we're still down about 15%, adjusted for population growth and inflation.
Here's the math: What's 45% of 27%? Answer: about 12 percentage points. Subtract 12 from 27 and you get 15 (85 on the graph at the left--add 15 to 85 and you get 100!).
Magic.
