If the stock market is ‘the final arbiter,’ Obama is a major success

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Steve Benen today reminds us of a GOP talking point from the past that the GOP would just as soon have everyone forget in an Emily Litella moment — "Never mind." Worst. Socialist. Ever.:

In 2004, a Bush cabinet official said job creation and GDP numbers matter, but "the stock market is … the final arbiter" of economic success.

If that's true, eight years later, Republicans ought to be awfully impressed with President Obama.

Through Friday, since Mr. Obama's inauguration — his first 1,368
days in office — the Dow Jones industrial average has gained 67.9
percent. That's an extremely strong performance — the fifth best for an
equivalent period among all American presidents since 1900. The Bespoke
Investment Group calculated those returns for The New York Times.

The best showing occurred in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term, when
the market rose by a whopping 238.1 percent. Of course, that followed a
calamitous decline. When his term started, the Dow had fallen to
one-fourth of its former peak. In 2008, the year before Mr. Obama took
office, the Dow declined by roughly one-third.

In the last half-century, the president who's overseen
the strongest performance on Wall Street was Bill Clinton. The second
best? Barack Obama, easily.

As we talked
about in April, this also suggests Obama is the worst socialist of all
time. A soaring stock market, record high corporate profits, private
sector job growth … it's almost as if the president didn't listen to
Karl Marx at all.

All joking aside, I don't consider major Wall
Street indexes a reliable metric when it comes to measuring the health
of the economy. Indeed, it's not even close.

But here's the kicker: Obama's detractors do consider major Wall Street indexes a reliable metric when it comes to measuring the health of the economy.

As long time readers may recall, the Wall Street Journal ran an entire editorial
in early March 2009 arguing that the weak Dow Jones was a direct result
of investors evaluating "Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to
governance."

Karl Rove and Lou Dobbs made the same case. So did Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Fred Barnes. For a short while, it was one of Mitt Romney's favorite talking points, too. Even John Boehner got in on the larger attack.

I don't think a strong stock market is necessarily proof of a robust
economy, but I also don't think the right should have it both ways.

Ah, but they always do. The sad part is that these ingrates on Wall Street who were bailed out by American taxpayers, and who were not prosecuted and sent to jail by the Obama Justice Department for their massive casino capitalism fraud, are the largest contributors to Willard "Mittens" Romney because he promises to let them run wild again.