Final answer:
Barack Obama was the president during the worst economic times since the Great Depression, as he was in office during the Great Recession that started in 2008.
Step-by-step explanation:
The president who was in office during the worst economic times since the Great Depression was Barack Obama. After the near-collapse of the global financial system in 2008, the United States faced the Great Recession, with high unemployment rates and significant economic contraction. Obama's administration passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in an attempt to mitigate the crisis. While Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush also faced economic challenges, with Reagan dealing with high unemployment rates in the early 1980s and Bush overseeing a recession towards the end of his presidency, the severity of the economic downturn was not as drastic as the one Obama inherited. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, presided over a period of economic expansion in the 1990s.