[480][481][482][483]
Many commentators credit Obama with averting a threatened depression and pulling the economy back from the Great Recession.[478] According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Obama administration created 11.3 million jobs from the month after his first inauguration to the end of his term.[484] In 2010, Obama signed into effect the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Passed as a response to the financial crisis of 2007–08, it brought the most significant changes to financial regulation in the United States since the regulatory reform that followed the Great Depression under Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[485]
In 2009, Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, which contained in it the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first addition to existing federal hate crime law in the United States since Democratic President Bill Clinton signed into law the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996. The act expanded existing federal hate crime laws in the United States, and made it a federal crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.[486]
As president, Obama advanced LGBT rights.