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What if it IS the Economy?
Friday, October 10, 2003
The FALL SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE is here! If you subscribed last Fall (not this past Winter) it's time. If you've never subscribed it's really time. In any event, go to the FALL SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE page and see what it's all about.
This was the lead graf at 2:00 pm yesterday on the Wall Street Journal's on-line page:
"A year to the day after major indexes hit their bear-market lows, Wall Street was looking a lot more jubilant. Investors bid stocks to new highs amid a wealth of encouraging news about the jobs market, retail sales and earnings."
What? You didn't hear about this?
I'm shocked.
To review the numbers one year ago, on October 9, 2002 the Dow Jones Industrials closed at 7286. The NASDAQ index closed at 1330.
Yesterday the two averages closed at 9680, plus 2384 (about a third higher) and 1912, plus 582 (up about 45 percent) respectively. The Dow's close was the highest in 22-months, since June 2002.
Dear Mr. Mullings: The Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded yesterday. You didn't win. Would you please move this along?
Signed, Adam Smith
Stay with me here. Although the indices closed off their session highs as profit takers moved in during afternoon trading, the driver behind the early surge yesterday were employment numbers.
Combined with the numbers from last Friday (again, according to the WSJ) "In addition, the four-week moving average of claims -- which irons out weekly volatility -- stood at an eight-month low of 393,500 last week."
When the stock market plummeted early last year the Democrats were all over the Sunday shows complaining that 401k plans were now 201k plans.
Now that the markets are in a major recovery, you don't hear anything from our friends on the Left about the state of the stock markets. In fact, you haven't heard about the stock markets from the Democrats in quite a while.
Instead they have (as we say in Your Nation's Capitol) moved the goalposts by saying its all about jobs, jobs, jobs.
Day after day on chat shows Republicans are asked "how will the President do if the job situation doesn't improve?" or some variant on that theme. The Democrat du jour who is on against me typically becomes almost jubilant over the prospect of unemployment figures creeping up through seven or even eight percent.
I then say something like, "Let's turn it around. What if the job picture improves - as most economists expect it to. What will the Democrats have to run on then?"
What follows is typically described in official transcripts as (Crosstalk).
More good economic news. A panel of 53 economists �
Sidebar:
This is an example of economic humor: If you laid all the economists in the world end-to-end they still wouldn't reach a conclusion
End Sidebar
� of 53 economists predicted the Gross Domestic Product would grow by about 4% next year (up from about 1.4 percent in the first quarter of 2003). Why? According to the Journal, "Many economists attributed the strength in consumer spending to the latest federal-tax reductions."
Memo to Howard Dean: Please do NOT change your message. Repeat it and repeat it: Reverse the Bush tax cuts. Reverse the Bush tax cuts.
The WSJ piece about the economy went on to say, "Some economists said they were caught off-guard by the extent of the stimulus created by the cuts."
Guess who wasn't caught off-guard. George W. Bush.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the subscription drive page, a nice Mullfoto and a strange Catchy Caption of the Day.
--END --
Copyright © 2003 Richard A. Galen
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