Pondering Wall Street's Drop: Politics In Perspective And Retreat

Expectation gave way to more disappointment on Wall Street today, as the Dow plummeted 251 points to 1997 levels.

Fingerpointing will now likely run amuck, as either Wall Street or Democrats and Republicans will all play the blame game.

Remember the bets that used to be made over 25 years ago about whether or not the Dow would ever reach 1,000?

How unpopular would it be to suggest that the next betting pool should be whether or not the Dow will return below 1,000?

The Associated Press reported on the skepticism:

"People left and right are throwing in the towel," said Keith Springer, president of Capital Financial Advisory Services.

Wait a minute.

We should blame the politicians when company heads are talking like that?

Reuters reported the spin that maybe the Dow index is not an accurate snapshot of the economy.

It has also stoked a decades-old debate over whether the 112-year-old index is really an accurate snapshot of the overall U.S. economy.

"It's been out of touch for a while," said Jocelynn Drake, an equities analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

"There are companies out there that are more significant to the market and they have not appeared in the Dow and there are others that should have been kicked out."

But expelling stocks because they are cheap would fail "to tell the story of the U.S. economy," said John Prestbo, editor and executive director of the Dow Jones Indexes. 

CNN Money on Sunday said banks were anticipated to move some chess pieces:

"Washington has become the financial capital of America and that does not make investors happy," said Kim Caughey, senior equity analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.

I'm no economist but maybe we shouldn't be relying on Congress and the White House to bailout an economy leveraged on debt.

Who do we blame then?

Bill Clinton?  He has taken responsibility recently for failing to regulate derrivative but that is a saleman's retreat.  Watch how all the politician's either retreat, spin or fail miserably to come to grips with the crisis.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times tore into how Clinton's pitching for President Barack Obama.

Says the ever-helpful Bill: “I just want the American people to know that he’s confident that we are going to get out of this and he feels good about the long run.”

It’s hard to muster moxie with stocks shriveling, Chris Dodd talking nationalization, and Paul Volcker making Chicken Little sound cheery — “I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression,” he said, “when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world.”

Would be it be more realistic and honest to admit that there is nothing to reverse what might be an inevitable reversal of fortune for a paper-thin economy?

I have no answers.  I'm a writer, a media guy and more prone to root for a peaceful overhaul (ie.-- primary and election day challenges in both major parties, everywhere).  There's no political spin to save a country from itself, except to admit failures and work from there.  If we all deflate together, the only enemy will be the tax bill.  By natural course of events, the worst case scenarios could bring everything down -- except our taxes.

Or does it occur to any of the fiscal masters that the our local, county, state and federal government entities have grown big enough on mandated programs alone to rival many publicly traded companies?

While we ponder Wall Street's drop, it's time to consider how big a percentage of our economy is now the public sector and what happens if we expand this debt-ridden operation any further.  I'll put out the question a bit a differently.  Would you buy stock in the federal government right now?  People buy bonds, with assurances of being paid back, but it's our tax dollars that inevitably meet those guarantees.

... So it's our tax dollars boosting the federal stock ... and it's a bad way for America to invest its hard-earned dollars.

We choose to make that sloppy investment by electing candidates whose economic acumen is opportunistic ... and I wonder sometimes if these elitist knuckleheads have ever grasped the concept of a $65.5 trillion debt.

Blame Obama, if you dare, but not if you voted for him.

Comments

[SJS]

Here's a weird thought about placing the "Blame"... How about blaming the sitting President that held the "Decider" pka over the last 8 years. I thought that I'd help you out since the article mentioned Bill Clinton (skipped the Decider) and arrived at Barack Obama(?). This is why Republicans are clueless and not taken seriously by Independents like my wife and I. Self-Destructing right before our very eyes.