Market Is Up; Boehner Kicks Cat

3/6/2013

Dow Jones Industrial Average 2 Minute

Dow Jones Indices: .DJI - Mar 6 4:35pm ET

14296.24+42.47 (0.30%)

I'm not a big money guy, and I know the Dow Jones is not a total indicator of national economic health.

All I can say is, this is what happens when a nation elects a Kenyan socialist introvert. It's all his fault, as usual.

siwanoy

3/6/2013 12:30:49 pm

Dear George,
I have no really good idea what your post means, but perhaps I can guess. We are in a world of crazies, and no one, of either political party, cares for our national welfare or our people, but only about making the other group look bad. May everyone on this blog live for at least ten years so that we don't die despondent and that we may have at least the opportunity to see a glimmer of hope for our future generations.
God bless.

Peterk

3/6/2013 01:24:12 pm

to believe that a Kenyan socialist introvert community organizer had anything to do with where the DJ index is today is to be oblivious to the rest of the economy.
I guess you're happy with 8% unemployment, etc

Brian Savin

3/6/2013 02:00:47 pm

Oh, you think George means that the Dow Jones is a reflection of recovery -- is that it? If that is your thesis, you are correct, Peterk. This is the first time in our lifetime that there has been such a dramatic dichotomy between corporate profits and social welfare since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. What we see in the Dow Jones distortion from all other economic data is the line from the old play, Li'll Abner, when they sang the song, "What's good for General Bullmoose, is good for the USA!" Our President has been excellent for Wall Street profits and exquisitely lousy for the common people. What hasn't been so clear in the record evidence before now, is the chasm that can take place between Wall Street profits and the common good. "Trickle down" is nonsense.

George Vecsey

3/7/2013 02:50:58 am

I forgot to mention community organizer, another flaw.
My first sentence acknowledged that the Dow Jones is not my standard of economic health, yet the country (and much of the media) celebrate every daily surge, like a touchdown or something. And the president is often portrayed as an enemy of the market. So when the market goes up, it's a bad day for the label they are trying to stick on him. GV

Brian Savin

3/7/2013 01:09:38 pm

Actually, George, the problem is virtually the opposite. Our President has been criticized most damningly not from the ideological crack heads of my own Republican Party, some of whom are equivalent to the old John Birch Society, but from social progressives, the best of whom who are both from the old Republican Party a few of us have been brought up on, and also from a few truly progressive Democrats who know what they are talking about. Today our President had lunch with a Republican. About time, even if he doesn't respect him. Every President in the last two centuries except this one has used meals at the White House to argue his case with legislators. This President, has not. In fact, he has argued nothing to legislators, or addressed the electorate on issues of import, as Ronald Reagan did so many times for his priorities. This President has left everything of substance to his political "handlers." He likes being President, but that is not enough to lead usefully or do his job successfully.

ALL (repeat, ALL) of the idealists who signed on to this Administration as progressive Democrats have resigned in disgust and are now critics to various degrees. Elizabeth Warren is a late coming exception, but not by much, and only because she ran for Senate and needed the money support that the President's "handlers" have controlled. On substantive matters, she was treated shabbily by our President and not supported in the least in her effort to reform the financial sector. The Republicans actually acquiesced to her nomination to be the financial services cop on the beat, but our President caved to pressure from the financial industry to can her.

Oh dear. Let's please avoid politics on this blog and have fun in the many other aspects of our lives. I apologize for being way too close to this Washington political nonsense to be respectful of well meaning assumptions.

Alan Rubin link

3/8/2013 02:51:56 am

George,

I have never understood why so many people over the years have always been concerned about “how will it play on Wall Street”. Back in the days when 52 million shares traded in one day was a big deal, I commuted sixty miles round trip to work, roughly two hours of radio time. It often struck me as odd that over time, the same reasons were offered to explain why the market went up or down.

In today’s era of instant communication, explanations are often offered before a story or an event has fully played out. The so-call expert pundits, whether political or financial, are usually wrong much more often than they are right.

Normally, I only discuss politics or religion with friends, and with the understanding that we accept each other’s beliefs and keep it a learning experience.

Based upon what I've read, most economists believe that the current emphasis on austerity, both here and in Europe, has shrunk rather than stimulated national economies. Yet, despite several years of negative results, more austerity continues to be advocated.

The first and last paragraph in today’s NY Times “The Market Speaks” by Paul Krugman addresses the issue of experts and predictions.

“Four years ago, as a newly elected president began his efforts to rescue the economy and strengthen the social safety net, conservative economic pundits — people who claimed to understand markets and know how to satisfy them — warned of imminent financial disaster. Stocks, they declared, would plunge, while interest rates would soar.

So the message from the markets is by no means a happy one. What the markets are clearly saying, however, is that the fears and prejudices that have dominated Washington discussion for years are entirely misguided. And they’re also telling us that the people who have been feeding those fears and peddling those prejudices don’t have a clue about how the economy actually works.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/opinion/krugman-the-market-speaks.html?hp&pagewanted=print

What I find most troubling is that too many segments of our society, whether it government, financial institutions, the business sector, etc., continually puts their self-interest ahead of the public good.

charlie vincent

3/9/2013 01:06:43 am

Comment deleted

Brian Savin

3/9/2013 11:48:12 am

Charlie, the economy sucks. Don't for a moment believe otherwise. We are approaching the 1930's and, frankly, I personally believe we are there already.

charlie vincent

3/10/2013 05:14:00 am

Nothing stimulates outrage so much as our socialist, fascist, Kenyan-born, Muslim president because such a large segment of our population insists that he is just that despite facts proving otherwise.
They say you don't have to know anything to have an opinion and retired sportswriters (me, not you, George) are proof of that, I suspect,
I believe the market rise is not an anomaly but a true indication of what is going on on main street, where employment IS up, where people ARE beginning to buy homes again, where home prices ARE increasing. I believe big business, which has resisted the policies of this administration by and large, is now beginning to see there is more money to be made by hiring and looking forward with increased production, than in their 4-year-old policy of sitting on their hands and sitting on their money. Obama is far from a perfect president but whatever God there may be clearly has spared us from a country overseen by either/or McCain and Romney.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Market Is Up; Boehner Kicks Cat

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