Monday, January 14, 2008
Where's your money?
The Dow has
barely kept pace with inflation during Bush's term.
The S&P has
barely kept up with cash (3 month T-bills).
Yet, a recent
WSJ article states: "59% of the [59 economists the WSJ surveyed] said the stock market performs better under Republican presidents, compared with 28% who said it favored Democrats."
This persistent myth of stocks doing better under GOP Presidents must be challenged at every opportunity, because it's not even close to being true. No matter how you slice and dice the numbers since 1901, Democrats come out on top. And yet economists like to think that their discipline is
data-driven.
Labels: Dems, Dismal Science, GOP, Markets
6 Comments:
This post needs a "dismal science" label.
Quite right. Thank you.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't defend the economics profession, but that was a WSJ survey. The few that they named seemed to business economists who probably reflected the corporate culture of the financial firms that they work for. It wouldn't surprise if it were deliberately rigged to be the mirror image of those surveys that show liberal journalistic bias by not only concentrating on reporters rather editors and publishers, but sometimes by including rock music, art and theater critics. The WSJ would probably have the same interest in showing a conservative slant among economists that some conservative groups have in showing a liberal academic or media bias.
Bartlet for America.
if your going to call it a myth show the data. If you want to be unbiased show both sets of data and explain.
Follow the "Data driven" hyperlink anon.
bsjd: the survey might have biased participants, but they are making a factual claim about history that is false.
