Business Week: Public wrong, markets right, Obama plan workingBy Ron Brynaert
Friday, April 9th, 2010 -- 10:16 am
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Never mind the polls, Mike Dorning seems to be suggesting in an article for Business Week which analyzes Obama administration's economic policies.
In a shorter version of the article for Bloomberg News, Dorning writes, "Americans believe, by an almost 2-to-1 margin, that the economy has gotten worse rather than better during the past year, according to the March Bloomberg National Poll. The market begs to differ, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports in its April 19 edition. While President Barack Obama’s overall job-approval rating has fallen to a low of 44 percent, down 5 points from late March according to a CBS News Poll, the judgment of financial markets has turned positive."
The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up about 75 percent from its recession low in March 2009. Corporate bonds have been rallying for a year. Commodity prices have surged. International currency markets have been bullish on the dollar for months, raising it by about 10 percent since Nov. 25 against a basket of six major currencies. Housing prices have stabilized. Mortgage rates are around 5 percent, down from more than 8 percent in 2000, according to data from Freddie Mac, the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage buyer.
The article includes some favorable reviews of Obama:
"We've had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board," says Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., an institutional trading firm in New York. "If Obama was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the President."
....
"There is more business confidence out there," says Boeing (BA) CEO Jim McNerney. "This Administration deserves significant credit."
....
"When you take it all together, the response was massive, unprecedented, and ultimately successful," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com (MCO). Even Obama critics like Phil Swagel, assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy under George W. Bush, acknowledge that White House policies have been successful. "They could have done a better job" by spending more of the stimulus on corporate tax cuts to boost hiring and investment, says Swagel, now an economics professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. "But their economic policies, including the stimulus, have helped move the economy in the right direction."
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More:
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0409/bloomberg-public-wrong-markets-obama-plan-working/:wow:
:shrug: