recovery. This article says it all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-phillips/the-tricky-2009-politics_b_174887.htmlDespite its recent uptick, the stock market has plummeted since Barack Obama's January inauguration. The Republicans seek to blame the man and his policies, with which most Americans take issue. Still, it's more common for the hope invariably surrounding new presidents to spark a rally.
That was certainly true in the depths of the Great Depression and the 1932 presidential election. Back then, new chief executives took the oath in March, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's first months in office sent the battered stock market indexes soaring. People could almost smell the hope in the Spring air,. By June 1933 the battered Dow Jones Industrial Average had climbed by some fifty percent.
Democratic strategists and activists should be concerned over the contrast. Although it's too early to reach conclusions, it is useful to take a hard look at what's going on in the ever-changing politics of finance.
Back in early 2008, I published a book entitled Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism. It did well, and now is about to come out in a much-expanded and updated new post-election edition on March 31. Politically, it holds Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the Republicans principally responsible for what went wrong over 25 years of financial greed and complicit Washington regulatory negligence. In party terms, the GOP gets 70 percent of the blame and the Democrats 30 percent. When I finished the new additions in January, however, I was skeptical about whether Obama would be able to bring about the needed changes and reforms in U.S. finance. His team had become too entangled with with the financial sector and its massive political contributions. Besides, too many of his top appointees were recycled senior Democrats from the Clinton administration's own tech mania, deregulation binge and stock bubble and crash of 1997-2000.
Still, I had voted for Obama in November. Even at New Year's, I hoped that the indications of the new administration's continuity with the failed financial bailout policies of the Bush administration would dissipate by Spring. I assumed that by the time I had to book tour in April, some long-neglected indictments of the financial sector would be on the table, and that debate over the bailout and over the disastrous misjudgments of the Federal Reserve Board would remain open. I would not have to criticize Obama himself.
Now, with April only two weeks away, that may be too hopeful.
... ... ... ...
Go to the link to finish the article.