No moving of any goalpost. Go back and read the post I replied to. The implication is that just because a clip was on Fox News it should not be believed due to their slant.
Marley, I’m not here to debate which network is most biased and if I am mistaken about what you wrote I apologize. But, your wording does suggest that you will dismiss a story just because it was on Fox as opposed to MSNBC.
It is absolutely impossible to draw this as a conclusion from what I’ve said in this thread. I didn’t mention Fox at all until you started your tangent equivocating Fox to other networks. I didn’t say I would reject a story because it was on Fox, nor did I say I would accept it because it ran on MSNBC. The only comment I made about MSNBC was obviously a disparaging one.
I humbly suggest you re-read what I’ve written.
I did and you’re wrong.
To make amends for the hijack (upon which I won’t comment any further), IMO Obama shouldn’t adjust his policy because of day-to-day (or even week-to-week) market performance. It’s exactly that kind of thinking that market proponents (rightly) decry when it comes to investing – over the long term, the market has the best return.
Marley23, you talked about Fox before I entered the conversation. I humbly suggest you reread your own postings:
I don’t really see how I am mistaken. I should not have mentioned MSNBC but, instead, any other network in general.
You reference clips of people saying the market is reflecting a vote of no confidence in Obama. But, it was on Fox so it should probably be dismissed. What am I missing here?
His course is due in large part to the market collapse, which happened before he too office, remember. But it is more due to the actual crisis - which is not primarily the stock prices.
The market went up > 100 points Wednesday expecting the Chinese to have another stimulus package, and down 200 points yesterday when they didn’t. You want to conduct long term policy based on things like that?
And, Marley23, Jim Cramer is saying it also - and he’s never been wrong about anything. 
Getting off the Fox News tangent, I think an underreported point is that what’s good for the economy as a whole is not necessarily equivalent to what’s good for the stock market. For example, at this point, many economists are coming around to the position that some form of bank nationalization may be necessary to save the financial system.
Let’s say, arguendo, that nationalization is the correct course to take, and happens. The immediate effect on the market will be for the Dow to drop, since nationalization means that many bank stocks will become worthless (including likely-to-be-nationalized Dow components Citi and BofA). So that’s a situation where the interests of the economy are not reflected by the performance of the stock market. To take the argument in the other direction, possibly the best thing Obama could do to goose the Dow is to promise to give GM as much money as it wants, no strings attached, and likewise for the banks. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing to do for the economy.
I wouldn’t expect a policy change. What I would expect (and what we’ve already seen some of) is an increased focus on ac-cent-chu-ating the positive. The fluctuations of the market are heavily influenced by public perception. If the WH can convince people that things are starting to turn around, those who invest at the bottom of the market will considering buying again and the market will start to turn around. Thus does word become deed.
Mind you, that’s a pretty tough sell these days.
No, I didn’t. Leaper did, and he’s not me. I said what I saw on the Daily Show (which included some clips from Fox but probably almost as many from CNBC) backed up what I already believed: nobody credible is saying Obama should change courses because the market is down, or that the country doesn’t approve of his plans because the stock market is down since he was elected or inaugurated. If you’re opposed to his proposals, that’s fine, but stock market movements do not show those proposals have been rejected.
What you’re missing is that I didn’t say anything like that at any time. I dismissed their view, but it had nothing to do with the network any of those views were expressed upon. The issue is that the viewpoint doesn’t make sense and was expressed in a stupid manner, not the name of the network in the lower right corner of the TV. That’s why I responded to the comment Leaper made about the TDS clips showing this viewpoint, but not to the bit about them being on Fox.
I believe this is incorrect. He is using to market collapse to push through a lot of spending and projects that probably would not see the light of day if people found out what is really in these bills.
Also, I don’t think the OP is referring to daily fluctuations in the market but to the overall downward trend since Obama started rolling out all of his plans.
Marley23,
(Me on one knee) I humbly apologize. I saw your name highlighted in that thread and, even after going back to reread it, still did not see that Leaper posted that comment. I think my head cold has spread to my brain.
Not a problem, yorick73.
I don’t agree with this, though. it’s quite far out of context: The Nasdaq is down 15 percent since Obama was inaugurated, but down about 42 percent since Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Or if you’d like a more comparable time period, it lost 22.5 percent between the Lehman Bankruptcy and the election.
People are getting hurt by the way the stocks are getting hammered, but for most people the bigger problem is rising unemployment and the other signs the economy is in the tank. Most of those cannot possibly be attributed to Obama’s plans, and most of the market decline can’t be, either.
The Daily Show piece you’re referring to was specifically about CNBC, an alleged business and financial news network and the home of Rick Santelli, whose rant led to TDS’ response.
The key statement was Stewart’s definition of the Dow as “a short twitch numerical representation of a bunch of guesses about other peoples’ assumptions about the financial well-being of an arbitrary chosen group of 30, out of tens of thousands of possible companies.”
TDS’ thesis is that the collective gross incompetence demonstrated by Wall Street “experts,” including pundits like Santelli, renders “the market” ineligible as a barometer of political success.
Polls of actual people suggest that most support Obama’s efforts.
The market is hardly a rational beast and charting the course towards the economy’s long term health based on its short term gyrations would be foolish indeed.
Since Keynes is the economist to be vaunted for our time (apparently) I submit two of his pertinent quotes:
The first having some implication on why we all are so tempted to follow the wisdom of the market.
And the second unfortunately a warning over how long it may take until the market recovers.
Oh, for the fun of it, look at the detail of what happened to stock prices at the end of Hoover’s term and into Roosevelt’s run.
Prices bottomed out in Hoover’s term.
March 1933 Roosevelt was inaugurated. The market then stayed flat for nearly a year until starting to go back up. Meanwhile though GDP was beginning to rise fairly consistently.
Would anyone think that the market’s doubling those two months under Hoover’s watch was a sign he was doing all the right things? Let’s look at the GDP in a year after Obama’s been in office before discussing whether he should change course, 'kay?
I understand that the market was way down before Obama took office. But, the fact that the market has had such a negative reaction to Obama’s policies should give anyone pause.
The market is usually a bellweather of future economic strength or weakness and Wall Street does not believe that Obama’s policies will do anything to get us out of this mess. It’s not so much about the effect on people’s portfolios but what the market is predicting.
Maybe I missed it, but I’ve heard him use the unemployment rate as justification, and the foreclosure rate as justification, but not the price of the Dow.
For example, one thing that led the Dow down is the price of bank stocks. Nationalization will wipe them out, which will hurt, but might make future investors pay more attention to what company management is doing. Investing is all about risk, even if more investors never consider losing everything.
The decline in the banks and automakers is from real factors. How much of the decline in companies with good balance sheets comes from panic? The government can either respond to the panic, perhaps making it worse, or do what they consider right. It is possible to acknowledge that something is being done for the right reasons even if you think it is the wrong thing to do.
it is not clear to me what the alternative strategy of the “market” is. I doubt it would respond very well to letting AIG go bankrupt. Looking at the fundamental issues, I predicted back before the election that things were going to get much worse before they get better. The impact of unemployment and the fear of unemployment on most of the population is causing the continued slide. The perilous state of most of America is the result in policies that increased the income gap, and caused middle class wages to stagnate while the rich made out fine. Solving this fundamental problem is at the heart of a lot of the things you don’t seem to like. It’s a major break from the last 30 years so of course it is radical, and investors, who are disproportionately a part of the top, don’t like it.
What I got out of that brilliant piece was that there is no reason for Obama or anyone else to take the advice of a group of “experts” who got everything so wrong. The market may or may not be a barometer of anything, but Jim Cramer saying it is so means nothing.
I think blaming Obama for the slide is another symptom of the “the last 8 years didn’t happen” disease.
That’s a claim commonly made, but is it true? Do you have reason to believe it other that you’ve heard it said?
Trying to research it out myself, it seems like Wall Street actually is not so hot as a predictor of the economy as a whole.
Now mind you, I think it is hard to argue against a thesis that a stock market crash in progress correlates with fundamental economic disarray which correlates with an increased risk of a depression - but short term market reactions as a judge of long term policy efficacy? These are the same people who were buying in under Bush. Remember that.
He should scrap the incredibly bad joke called a stimulus package and have the Treasury Dept. cut a check for $5000 to each taxpayer that filed a return in 2008. Put the money where it needs to be - in the hands of people that will spend it. That will restart the economy, not his pork barrel bill.
(bolding mine)
Won’t that take, at very least, months? (Many, many months?)
