Obama, earnings to call stocks' tune ($4.6 trillion of lost stock market value under Bush)

[UpInArms]

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street will greet a new president this week with high hopes for a fresh start, but a deluge of corporate earnings reports pointing to a deepening recession could spoil the welcome party.

Stocks closed the curtain on the George W. Bush era on Friday, capping an eight-year run that produced a 36.9 percent drop in the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) and more than $4.6 trillion of lost stock market value.

With that dismal context, investors are eager to see what Barack Obama has up his sleeve to jolt the economy out of recession and restore confidence to battered financial markets.

Obama will be sworn in at midday on Tuesday as the 44th president of the United States and as the nation's first African-American head of state.

Markets on Monday will be closed for the Martin Luther King Jr Day holiday.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090118/bs_nm/us_column_sto...

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Hopefully, this will be the end of the Republican ruination of the economy with their "free market" crapola.

[Stargleamer]

1. And yet Bush regrets that he wasn't able to privatize. . .

Social Security