The reviews are in and Barack Obama seems to have laid a big fat egg -- on Wall Street anyway. In all fairness, the President cannot be held responsible for all the turmoil afflicting the stock market and the American economy. The crisis did precede him. But we were promised that an Obama presidency would restore our economy; the campaign was all about hope and change. Change is happening but not the hope. How do we know this?
Wall Street and businesses look ahead-stock prices reflect the future value of companies; businesses hire to prepare for the future. Conversely, when stock prices collapse (the Dow is down nearly 9% since the New Year began, the S&P 500 about 8.6%) and companies lay off workers (almost 600,000 and counting since Barack Obama won in November), hope is just not happening. It is just a word, after all.Why?I won't linger over the policies being promoted that send a clear message: free enterprise is on the endangered list. But a brief recap might help to explain why I have this prognosis.The "stimulus" bill will not stimulate the economy. Very few of the dollars being spent (borrowed -- to be paid back by us and our descendants ‘til kingdom come) will go towards infrastructure spending or the types of targeted measures that help business grow and hire workers. Instead, Nancy Pelosi and company have larded up the bill to please a swath of Democratic special interest groups, including members of a politically powerful union with close ties to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
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