| He's no socialist, like Clear-Channel spokesman Mike Rosen alleged. President Barack Obama is too conservative and has defaulted to too many DC formulas for my tastes, but has generally led as a common-sense, socially-moderate, somewhat-conservative Republican. This frames the RosenClones' constant assault against a rambunctious Dow Jones average that energetically bounds the 13,000 mark.
The Dow was at 8182 when Bush left office.
Of course, the unrequited bipartisanship, the deferred goals of the left, and the constant pandering to Congressional Republicans is still completely unacceptable to today's Republicans who have spun completely off the rails and are presently planting their brand into history's graveyard. While they go down fighting, lying, whining, and dividing, further proof Democrats are better at economic issues is undeniable: The stock market has been flirting with 13,000 for days, a level at which it has not closed since 2008. As ThinkProgress' Scott Keyes reported, Republicans have been at pains to explain why President Obama deserves no credit for the Dow's rebound (even though the GOP was quite willing to blame Obama when the Dow tanked in 2008 and 2009).
But as it turns out, Obama is not the only Democratic President under whom the stock market has done well for investors. A Bloomberg Government report shows that since the 1960′s, stocks have done significantly better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones:
The BGOV Barometer shows that, over the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (SPX) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday.
That's more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations. A $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office. For those that believe money does buy happiness (re: Economic Republicans), that should be proof enough. For those who lie about Democrats as their day gig, they'll continue to ignore the truth. The rest of us don't need to be told again....
(h/t ThinkProgress) |
