There was a period about ten months ago when every time Obama opened his mouth, the stock market plunged another 100 points. At that time, the Anointed One rarely missed an opportunity to trash the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, automobile companies and of course big banks. When he wasn’t verbally accosting these industries, he was promising sweeping new legislation and regulations that would supposedly rein them in and curtail their abusive practices.
Not surprisingly, the market reacted very negatively to these threats—both to the specific prospects inherent in Obama’s threats as well as to the uncertainty caused by their enunciation. Untold hundreds of millions of dollars of asset wealth were destroyed by the resultant decline in the Dow and other indices.
Since more than half of Americans are now shareholders, it is not unfair to lay the blame for a decline in the typical American taxpayer’s wealth at Obama’s feet. It is ironic that, last year, when too many Americans were still under the illusion that Obama’s stimulus program, deficit spending and cap and trade and health care monstrosities were going to help rescue the economy (they aren’t any longer), his loose tongue was already diminishing the wealth of the American people. It got so bad that even Bill Clinton had to tell him to button it.
Well, here we go again. This past week his Excellency reprised his repeated thrashing of the banking and insurance industries. With the same result on the stock market! Now, many expected that the recent market surge would yield to a correction. Leave it to our clueless President to initiate the correction and render it more severe than necessary. It’s time for Bill to tell him to shut up again.