The DOW plummeted another 7% again today, bringing the total sell off from just today and September 29 to nearly 1456.59 points. Out of the 12,000 points near the start of September, that’s a 12% drop. That’s excluding the 400 and 500 point losses that have been seen in recent days. What is clear to me is that, regardless of wether the bailout works or not, the economy is not going to recover for quite some time.
Just consider this when voting for the next president. The last Democrat who was in office saw the DOW increase from about 3,450 points in January of 1993 to 11,500 in January of 2000. Since George Bush has been in office, 9/11 aside, the market had a net gain up to 14,279 points on October 11, 2007. It has now plunged to below 9,000 points for the SECOND time since he took office. FDR pulled us out of the Great Depression which started under the watch of Republican Herbert Hoover. Ronald Reagan was President during the Savings and Loans debacle and subsequent market crash in 1987. George H.W. Bush saw some economic gains halfway through his presidency, but is was only once Bill Clinton became president that the economy saw its greatest acceleration.
I don’t normally call out a political party on it’s inability to do something, but one thing is certain to me: Republicans cannot run the economy effectively. Barack Obama is poised to become this generation’s FDR and pull us out of another mess that happened under the watchful(?) eyes of a Republican president.
Sources for this post: Wikipedia pages related to the history of the DOW Industrial Average.