Smarter than most? Maybe. That's not saying much. The president needed to understand fractional banking, highly-complex social-economic models, world politics a

Smarter than most? Maybe. That's not saying much. The president needed to understand fractional banking, highly-complex social-economic models, world politics and most of all he needed to know the people he was dealing with. He didn't understand these things. His presidency is littered with all the evidence. I could give you a list of the screw ups but we all know them. The question is did he understand the economic collapse as it was happening, no, he didn't. It took economists a few months to understand.