While getting ready to go to work this morning I was listening to James Carville complain about the recent rise in George Bush's (and America's) fortunes. As part of his argument that we're applying the "soft bigotry of low expectations" to the Bush administration he made the comment that the Stock Market is currently 10% below what it was when Bush took office. I grew a bit skeptical of that claim, so looked it up. It appears that the DOW closed at either $10,088 or $10,078, depending on whether we're talking about Clinton's last day or the first market day of Bush's term. Yesterday the DOW closed at $11,015. Using the CPI deflator that is $5976 and $5440 in 1983 dollars, respectively. Carville is right to the extent that the average is down (after accounting for inflation), but 0.6% is a lot different than 10%. [See note below for--ahem--correction.] Moreover, it's arguably unfair to make this comparison since Bush really wasn't able to influence the economy until Clinton's budget year ended, and that extended through the end of September, 2001. Not holding Bill accountable for the consequences of 9/11, on the day prior to the attack the DOW closed at $9,606, which deflates to $5388 in 1983 dollars. Either way one looks at it Carville wasn't even close. The stock market is either very modestly lower, or higher, than when Bush's watch began.

Note: For some reason both my adjusted index for Clinton and the calculation of the percent change were off, the latter by an order of magnitude. And I calculated it twice! Beware of calculators before morning coffee. At any rate the actual percent drop in the Dow was about 5.5% from Jan. 2001 to now. But again, if we use as our point of comparison the end of Clinton's policy domination of the market on Sept. 10, 2001 the market has actually gone up.

Posted by: Demosophist at 09:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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