Even now, Americans will occasionally hear complaints from the right about President Obama’s “socialism” and unyielding hostility towards the free-enterprise system. We’re occasionally reminded, however, that if Comrade Barack is trying to destroy Western capitalism, he’s not having much luck at it.
The S&P 500 hit its first record in more than a year Monday, a reflection of investors’ bets that the U.S. economy remains a pocket of solidity in a troubled world.A better-than-expected jobs report Friday was the latest boost to the S&P 500, which has gained more than 16% since falling to a yearly low in February. Stocks have been bolstered by signs of strength in the U.S. economy, a recovery in oil prices and the Federal Reserve’s cautious stance toward raising interest rates.
Note, in early 2009, when the Great Recession was at its most severe, the S&P 500 fell below 700. Today, it closed at an all-time high of over 2,137.
That’s right, this index has more than tripled in value in the Obama era, the White House’s dastardly socialist agenda notwithstanding. In fact, as we discussed last year, when we look back over the last several generations, Wall Street gains under Obama are far stronger than under Reagan, and rival the bull market of the Clinton era.
This Washington Post piece from 2014, on “the worst op-ed in history,” continues to be funny.
On March 6, 2009, former George W. Bush adviser Michael Boskin offered whatever the opposite of a prophecy is when he said that “Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Dow.”Now let’s set the scene. Obama had been in office for less than two months at that point, and in that time, stocks had admittedly fallen a lot as markets worried that the big bank bailout known as TARP wouldn’t actually be enough to save the banks. It got so bad that Citigroup briefly became a penny stock.Boskin, though, didn’t think that this once-in-three-generations financial crisis was to blame for the market meltdown. Instead, he blamed it on Obama for … talking about raising taxes?
As regular readers may recall, in the first few weeks of the Obama presidency, with Democrats scrambling to address the economic crisis they inherited, Republicans actually had the gall to tell Americans to blame the White House for the crisis on Wall Street.
As we’ve discussed, Karl Rove and Lou Dobbs explicitly made this argument. 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.
Each of them were spectacularly wrong, and as best as I can tell, none of these figures have made any effort to explain their mistake.
Just to be clear about this, I’m not suggesting a soaring stock market is necessarily proof of a strong economy — it’s not, and there are far more important metrics — and suggesting that the president is solely responsible for the direction of market indexes is wrong.
That said, a little consistency would be nice. Conservatives shouldn’t say a falling stock market in early 2009 is proof that Obama’s agenda is a dangerous failure, and then ignore a rising stock market as irrelevant.
Recommended
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."