Obama's 180 On The Economy: Bullish On The Up-Market, But He Helped Its Fall

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

Feel as if the Obama administration has done a 180 on the economy? You're hardly alone. I've been carping for months now about the president's criticism of the economy and how it was harming the investment climate. When President Obama uses words such as "catastrophic," Wall Street listens. Now that the president's pushed his stimulus package through Congress, he and his advisers have changed tune and are positively bullish at least for them:

The New York Times says the Obama advisers "walked a careful line Sunday, saying that despite a few hopeful indicators and President Obama's call to investors to consider returning to the share markets, that it would 'take some time' to turn a corner."

Overly-enthusiastic Vice President Joe Biden crossed way over the line. In Arkansas over the weekend Biden said:

...he and the president have no doubt that the country will overcome its economic problems. And he feels the recent uptick in the stock markets is a result of the "Obama factor." He said people are starting to understand President Barack Obama has a plan.

There's only one problem with that. If Biden's going to claim credit for the bounce, he also has to explain why the Dow Jones Industrial Average was above 9,000 after the election but before the Obama administration passed its stimulus package, then fell to the mid-6,000 range, presumably as a result of the administration's mishandling of the economy.

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By Bonnie Erbe