ANOTHER rant for the political season…. The Economy!
I hate this time of year. This we’ve already established. But now, it’s becoming more because of the media and it’s “The world’s going to end, it’s all the Republican’s fault, vote democrat and you can save us!” mentality.
We all know what I’m referring to, kids. The economy. The fact is this: The majority of media outlets are left-leaning, and won’t outright support a republican candidate. These same media outlets know, for whatever reason, that democrats appear stronger on the economy than republicans, so what do they want to do? Scare everyone by saying “A new depression is coming! We’ll all be living out of cardboard boxes unless the democrats bail us out of our mortatges!”. And we, being the mindless sheep that we are and blindly trusting the established media outlets, go along with it. Every time.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to tell you all something that might come as a surprise to you, but it is true: Barack Obama isn’t going to save the economy. John McCain isn’t going to save the economy. George Bush didn’t cause the economic downturn we’re experiencing right now, and Bill Clinton didn’t cause the economic upturn he got right before he left office. That’s not how it works.
We’ve become so obsessed with the president being some kind of superhero, here to save us from high priced health care, economic troubles, and high gas prices. But let’s face it: They have about as much control in that position as I do writing legislation for Congress. but the politicians promise us all lower gas prices, a fixed economy, and health care for everyone if we’ll just vote for them (nevermind the “affordable health care” involves jacking up our taxes, or “fixing the economy” involves spending 700 billion dollars worth of money we don’t have to bail out wall street’s idiotic greed when it could’ve been fixed a whole lot cheaper… The way the market has been plummeting since the bailout was approved, clearly that plan worked like a charm… :-p)
Dave Ramsey said “If you follow the market day to day, you’ll give yourself an ulcer.” That’s a good point. the fact is, the market fluctuates day to day, but if you look at it for the last 100 years, you’ll be shocked to find out it has made movement in a generally upward direction. There have been hiccups, sure, but nothing we haven’t recovered from. Our economy is resillient, people, stop expecting the politicians to fix it and just let it ride.
If you don’t believe me, check out this graph of the Dow Jones industrial average:
DJIA_historical_graph_(log).svg (SVG file, nominally 800 × 400 pixels, file size: 791 KB)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So ladies and gentlemen, everyone take a big step back and calm down. The world is not going to end, the market has a long way to go before it crashes, and the politicians are NOT going to fix it. The media knows this, it’s about time we as Americans did our homework and paid a little more attention to it, too.
I’ve been saying this forever! The President has nothing to do with the economy. It swings negative every 10 years so, statistically, it was going to crash at the end of an 8 year Bush term and will be getting better by the end of Obama’s term.
Although, to play Devil’s Advocate – the President and Congress *do* have *some* effect. They can make it milder or worse by acting or not acting. I *think* most historian economists agree that Hoover’s administration lacking the will to do anything about the Dust Bowl farm crashes, Stock Crash, and worker’s rights left to the Great Depression being worse than it had to be.
And, also, according to most of the financial programs I’ve listened to/watched, the stock market is only loosely coupled to the economy. The stock market was doing very well in the 1930s way before the Depression was over.