The short answer is yes. The markets are gaining confidence that Obama is moving in the right direction. This is a slow and gradual process. Much still remains to be done.
Much of the "growth" that occured under Bush is now revealed to have been illusory, and we see pretty much all of the gains in household wealth that accrued under Bush have now been wiped out. The whole thing was essentially a distributed accounting scam to pretend that real estate is more valuable than it is. More important than that is not pursuing policies that exacerbate the corrections in the first place, while undermining the nation's ability to respond when they do occur. I.e., place sensible liquidity requirements on investment banks, keep an eye on the ratings agencies, and don't run massive deficits during periods of economic growth. The abdication of meaningful oversight upgraded the inevitable correction into a full-blown crisis, and the bankrupt fiscal policies have made counter-cyclical measures drastically less affordable. If you don't want to see massive responses to corrections, don't support policies that make them inevitable. That you conflate the right-wing socioeconomic policies and willful regulatory negligence that created this catastrophe with "capitalism" (and so imply that any who disagree with you must be "socialists") is nothing more than cheap rhetoric. It's not capitalism that failed, but fairy-tale notions of deregulation and cheap money. The "loose monetary policy" you wrote off as a diversion above is part and parcel of right-wing economic policy, sop as it is to Wall Street. Likewise the loose fiscal policy which, which amply demonstrates the Republican commitment to power through pork patronage over any of the "small government/fiscal responsibility" mantras.
I don't think the last three decades should be charcterized as strong economic growth. To me we had three decades of by-partisan support for policies that led to three decades of deindustrialization of the USA. We have had three decades of falling hourly wages in inflation adjusted dollars. The rising asset prices and technology driven increases in productivity just made it harder for people to understand that the USA peaked in 1973. What is the multiplier effect on foreign purchases of US financial assets? When the net foreign investment inflows stop we might find out what the multiplier effect of that investment was. The bipartisan repeal of Glass-Stiegel Act was so so wrong. Madanthonywayne, do you agree that repealing the Glass-Stiegel Act was a mistake? Some hard core backers of Reaganonmics may never be able to agree that some regulation of Wall Street improves Wall Street and the US economy.
Our strongest economic growth was the 1950-1960, everything afterward has been stagnation or depression in comparison.
The original post was made by Buffalo Roam 5 weeks after Obama took office. I thought it would be good to take a look at what has transpired in the nine months since Buffalo Roam made this dire post. The Dow has gone from 6,500 to 10,400. If this is the wrong direction as the orginal post claims, give me more of it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! If this is the wrong man, I am certianly glad we have the wrong man. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! If this is pessimism, give me more of it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And to top things off, we received the best unemployment report this morning since July 2007! If this is the wrong direction as Buffalo Roam and the Republicans claim all I can say is THANK GOD FOR THE WRONG DIRECTION! And thank God Republicans are no longer in control of the presidency and do not exercise supreme power in congress. I would think that after being so throughly proven wrong on a number of fronts that Republicans might do a little bit of introspection on their stands on the issues. But I would not hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
