The Golden Age of Obama

Bud Norman raises a point that others also wonder about. 

As much as we hate to be the gloomy sort who find dark clouds within every silver lining, we just can’t shake an unsettling feeling that there’s something fishy about this bullish stock market.

By the time you read this the Dow Jones Industrial Average might well have surpassed its all-time high, in which case the usual media cheerleaders will be singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” and claiming vindication for Obamanomics. Such gloating is understandable, as the stock indices provide a pleasant diversion from more depressing numbers, but those more depressing numbers make it all seem rather unaccountable.

The reigning record of 14,164 was set back in Oct. 9, 2007, in the dark days of the Bush administration when the economy was suffering through 4.9 percent growth in gross domestic product and a 4.7 percent unemployment rate, with personal income rising four-tenths of a percentage that quarter. In the Golden Age of Obama the Dow is back within shouting distance of that closing figure, but unemployment is at 7.9 percent, the latest quarterly GDP growth has recently been revised from a contraction of 0.1 percent to a slightly more robust gain of 0.1 percent, and personal incomes are dropping by 3.6 percent. Throw in another $7 trillion of national debt, a few credit downgrades for the federal government, higher taxes, a weakened global economy, and assorted international crises, and the current bull run becomes very hard to explain.