Free Republic

More than $9 trillion -- in taxpayer dollars -- has been pledged, committed, lent or spent by the federal government in response to the economic crisis. Some say that if the economy continues to deteriorate, trillions more might be necessary to prevent another Great Depression. Yet no one has investigated how this crisis happened. That is irresponsible. A comprehensive investigation is essential to prevent this from happening again.

The election of Barack Obama offered the promise of a new set of fixes for the financial crisis and the economy, a do-over that might help nurse the stock market back to health. Since then, the market hasn't just gotten worse - it's turned in its worst performance ever for a new president. The Dow Jones industrial average has fallen 21 percent during Obama's first seven weeks in office. Count back to Election Day and the results are even bleaker: That afternoon, the Dow closed at 9,625. Now it stands at 6,547, a loss of 32 percent. Stockholders have lost...

As if investors didn't have enough to worry about, a new land mine is lurking: "the Obama market." That's what I heard over the weekend from a veteran investment adviser, Charles Allmon. "Political ramifications represent a significant added market risk that should not be ignored," he says. Initial polling suggests that Senator Obama will be the next president, a view Mr. Allmon shares. An Obama presidency is certain to mean a big tax increase, he says. Further, the veteran adviser, who publishes a 46-year-old monthly investment newsletter, the Growth Stock Outlook, out of Bethesda, Md., made a marvelous market call...

President Obama has dispatched his best and brightest, unleashed hundreds of billion of stimulus money, used his political clout and soaring but pragmatic speeches without getting the economic engine restarted. When he took office on January 20, the Dow was at 9625, and it closed today at 6546, down 32 percent in the last 50 days.

...as of 3:59pm Dow 6,552.47 -74.47 -1.12% Nasdaq 1,270.03 -23.82 -1.84% S&P 500 676.98 -6.40 -0.94% ------- I like how the keep writing things like "investors are battling uncertainty" when it's the certainty of Obama's socialism, desired tax increases and hostility to the free market that people are battling. There's nothing "uncertain" about it.

So let me do the preachers of Armageddon one better. Today's stock market isn't just the “worst since the Great Depression,” like they're so fond of saying. No, it's even worse than the Great Depression. Take a look at the chart, below. It shows the daily progress of the S&P 500 in terms of percentage change from the very top. The brown line is the change from the recent all-time highs on October 9, 2007. The blue line is the change from the all-time highs just before the Great Depression, September 6, 1929. As of yesterday's close (Thursday, March 5),...