All Posts Tagged With: "obama"

What evil omen has the market noticed? What devil-on-the-loose does it fear? What plague, what war, what depression, what bankruptcy, what hyperinflation… did we say ‘hyperinflation’? Wait a minute. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Whatever the world’s stock markets see - it must be a damnable mess… as if the world didn’t have a future.

Yesterday, stocks got whacked again - the Dow was down 411 points, bringing the loss for the year to more than 4,000 points. Oil fell to $56 a barrel; investors feared that the world’s drivers would leave their cars in the garage and the world’s teenagers would begin turning off the lights when they left their rooms.

Obama is beginning to realize what he’s up against. This is no ordinary cyclical downturn. Typically, a slump brings interest rates down. (Usually accompanied by central bank rate cuts.) Cheaper borrowing arouses business and speculative activity… which, in turn, tends to get the economy moving again.

Instead, the Dow fell another 443 points yesterday. The index has fallen almost 1,000 points since the election results were announced. Oil fell too, and seems to be ready to drop below $60. As for gold, it lost more than $8 yesterday. That’s the way it’s been going. Gold loses value… but stocks lose more.

One of Obama’s prime campaign planks has been his promise to mercilessly raise taxes on the “rich,” a group initially defined as those making more than $250,000 per year. This was later dropped to $200,000 per year, and more recently has been defined as those Americans making more than $150,000 annually.