OK, just about anyone with a functioning brain already knows that Fox News is a biased player working on behalf of the GOP. But their analysis of financial matters and stock market activity is not just biased, but astonishingly stupid. Yesterday on Fox Nation they posted this “news” item: Romney Rally? Stocks Close Higher One Day After Debate.
Any time someone makes projections based on a single day of activity it is regarded by professionals as naivete and/or ignorance. So it goes without saying that Fox did just that. On the Fox Business Network, Stuart Varney dropped this mind-numbing stupidity: “Some will say this is a Romney Rally.” And Fox’s Lou Dobbs said “This is the beginning of what will be an even bigger Romney rally as the days unfold.”
Of course, any credible economist knows that market activity is based on a variety of financial data. Yesterday there was an abundance of factors to which the market’s movement could be attributed, including better than expected economic data and the European Central Bank’s freeze on interest rates at 0.75 percent.
Fox has a long history of making idiotic assessments of the stock market. In May of 2009, Brenda Buttner gushed, “Call it a tea party rally. Wall Street’s sure partying, up six weeks in a row.” In September of 2011, Fox Nation reported “Stocks Tumble Worldwide After Obama Speech.” Then in June of 2012, they fantasized that “Stock Market Drops After Obamacare Upheld.”
This tendency of the right to misinterpret all market activity as being the result of Obama (if stocks go down) or some conservative (if stocks go up), extends all the way back to Rush Limbaugh’s nutty commentary on February 8,2009, a mere two weeks after Obama’s inauguration, when he said “The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come.” Since then stocks have died to the tune of doubling from about 6,600 to over 13,500. Nice call, Rush.
Even Mitt Romney got into it a few days ago saying that “If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. […] Without actually doing anything, we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.” Romney, who considers himself an expert in finance, thinks the markets will advance by doing nothing. His magical name alone will rescue the economy.
What they commonly miss at Fox is that markets traditionally perform better under Democratic administrations than Republicans. And note that that link is to an article on the Fox Business Channel’s web site.
The one lesson that people can take away from this display of ignorance, is that anyone who relies on Fox News for economic advice deserves the economic ruin they suffer.
I pointed this out to a conservative friend of mine who gave a laundry list of items that are worse since Obama took office, like unemployment, blah, blah, blah. We’ve all seen it and they never take into consideration the horrible mess handed the President before he was sworn in. I think the market actually likes the regulation they put into place to stabalize it. If it is one thing we know the market likes stability. In their laundry list of now vs. when Obame took office they never mention the stock market rise. If a republican were in there that’s all they would talk about and we know that.
Get ready for the next round of bs froom the right with the unemployment number coming in at 7.8%. Jack Welch CEO of GE already has tweeted the numbers have been falsified. A stunning accusation of fraud leveled at the Bureau of Labor Statistics where these numbers come from. Never mind the fact the BLS number is what they used to beat Obama over the head with when it was over 8%. The right wing echo chamber will go into full swing and claim the numbers are false and here is our own number which, of course, is much higher. That is a pretty easy prediction to make and I guarantee it will happen in some form.
Ok, some of what you say is right, but when exactly does this president take ownership of anything? Is it just when the numbers are good and positive? I would even cut him more slack if he actually takes responsibility. You can’t just take credit for the good news only, it cuts both ways and this guy is a total embarassment on that count.
By the way, don’t get too excited on the jobless numbers just yet, job market participation may go up now if there is more confidence in the job market, which may end up raising the unemployment number – that’s not excuse making, it’s just a fact.
On the point of the article, funny how Fox news gets special coverage – I chose to watch Rachel Maddow last evening for about 10 minutes and found it incredibly funny that she spent those minutes I watched trying to rally the troops by presenting a graphic on how incumbent predidents fair in initial debates – it was a sad presentation. Jeez, It’s only one debate, we still have a long way to go.
Just a casual reminder of a really important fact that doesn’t come up enough;
Over the last 50 years, the economy has done better, the stock markets have gained more, more jobs were created and less wars were started under Democratic presidential administrations than Republican ones.
I really hate it when people make the stock market into some mythic entity that can be influenced by the winds of whatever is happening in the world. All anyone ever looks at anyway is the DOW and thirty companies are not the thousands that are actually traded everyday. If the prosperity of the country depends on Wal-Mart, Disney and McDonalds, then we should be looking at belt lines instead.
Hah there was a lot of Wall Street money backing the Republican party and have lost big. Many markets jump or slump on the first day after elections but I haven’t seen anything that convinced me of a long term trend. Also News Agencies can be biased it is a part of life and understanding it make easier to tolerate.