Obama and the Stock Market: is the media mentally ill?

by Roger L. Simon
March 2nd, 2009 12:00 pm
from Pajamas Media

I’m not an economist, nor do I play one on TV (or even Pajamas TV), but like a huge number of Americans I have invested in the stock market. My pension plan has dwindled by over fifty percent and my dreams of retirement have disappeared - not that I was going to do that, but I would like to have had an option or a cushion for my family, if something happened to me (touch virtual wood).

Of course I am not alone. Almost everyone is feeling this pain. Even, of course, the mainstream media, a large number of whom are losing their jobs and almost all of whom are seeing their savings vanish (unless they were smart enough to stay out of the market). But almost none of them are saying anything critical of Obama’s policies which, obviously, the stock market - conventionally the predictor of our economy - thinks are dead wrong.

Cognitive dissonance? Mental imbalance? Slavish idolatry? Or just plain inability to admit you made a mistake? You tell me. Meanwhile, the market goes lower and lower while the media continues its hosannas to BHO. I could just say it’s their futures, but it’s ours too, the selfish creeps.

Apropos of which, last Monday I was on the floor of the CME at the Chicago Board of Trade, interviewing for PJTV in the aftermath of the Santelli brouhaha. It was apparent there was no exaggeration: virtually every trader on the floor thought Obama’s bailouts were a recipe for economic disaster. And they are people who stake their livelihoods on it. We can be sure if they felt the other way, they’d be betting on it, no matter what their ideologies or political affiliations.

So, in the end, if things really go badly, I think it is the media that has led us into this, led the country to vote for an unprepared man with a self-destructive program. It will be interesting to see if they ever admit it.
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