Archives for March 2010

Remember this (from Glenn Greenwald, who, I have been reliably informed by some of you, never has a kind word for Obama nor has ever defended him):

Last Thursday, when the Dow was dropping to roughly 8,600, various right-wing polemicists claimed that the stock market was plummeting because investors were realizing that Obama would likely win and his policies would be bad for the economy. The Right’s leading intellectual historian, Jonah Goldberg, wrote a post he entitled “The Obama Discount,” and printed this email:

When are people going to start talking about the REAL reason the markets are down – Obama up in polls. If I was McCain, I’d start telling people, “If you want to lose more money, vote Obama.”

Though Jonah said he had “no idea whatsoever if there’s merit to this, and if there is how much merit,” he nonetheless noted that he was receiving “lots of email like this” — presumably from other geniuses who write emails sharing their economic theories with Jonah Goldberg.

Oddly enough, the Goldberg Theorem never gets trotted out for stuff like this:

Stocks post best first quarter gains in more than a decade

The stock market is taking some ages-old advice to heart: everything in moderation.

Stocks on Wednesday ended a first quarter that many investors and analysts would describe as healthy. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up 4.9% by amassing a string of steady gains that were far from the supersized jumps seen in 2009.

The Dow Jones industrials are up 4.1%, but with unremarkable gains of 50 points here and 15 there. They’ve had few of the triple-digit swings that used to be commonplace.

The market’s relative tranquility has made many analysts upbeat about the chances that its gains will hold. They say investors now have realistic not overoptimistic expectations. And the market has gotten used to the idea of a bumpy economic recovery, including the continuing struggles of the housing market. But analysts warn, for stocks to extend their January-March gains, investors will need to see employers hiring again.

Remember a month after the inauguration and Malkin when was blaming the Bush recession’s market collapse on Obama? Good times. Good times.

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