Browse: Home / 2009 / January / 20 / Despite Obama’s Inaugural Magnum Opus, U.S. Stocks Slide in Dow Average’s Worst Inauguration Day Drop

Despite Obama’s Inaugural Magnum Opus, U.S. Stocks Slide in Dow Average’s Worst Inauguration Day Drop

By PUMA Pundit on January 20, 2009

So much for “hope” and “change” oh and “fatih” too… I guess the markets have told Obama how they feel about his presidency… Oh well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean everything is honky dory, and we’re partying like money is going out of style…

Bloomberg

U.S. stocks sank, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst Inauguration Day decline, as speculation banks must raise more capital sent financial shares to an almost 14-year low.

The S&P 500 plunged 5.3 percent to 805.22. The S&P 500 Financials Index fell 17 percent to below its lowest closing level since March 1995 as concern European banks need more capital also weighed on the group. The Dow Average slid 332.13 points to 7,949.09. Both the Dow and S&P 500 retreated to two- month lows.

The S&P 500 is off to its worst start to a year, shattering the biggest rally since World War II, as analysts cut earnings estimates by a record 83 percentage points and companies signal worse to come.

The S&P 500 is down 11 percent in the first 12 trading days of 2009, exceeding last year’s 9.2 percent drop, according to data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1928. The decline helped erase more than two-thirds of a 24 percent rally since Nov. 20 as optimism that government spending would revive the economy evaporated.

Treasuries fell for a second day on speculation Obama will sell record amounts of debt to battle the recession. The dollar strengthened for a second day against the euro.

Posted in | Tagged , , | 1 Response

At times I feel like it's just me against the world...

  • mbander

    I guess a lot of people understand that we cannot borrow and spend our way out of this recession. Hope one of P-BO’s financial geniuses tell HIM about it. Never worked before, won’t work now.

    Maybe these guys did the math on his plan. If he spends $850 billion (and we have already heard that is not enough) and creates over 3 MILLION jobs, it will be at a cost of over $200,000 per job. And as infrastructure (mostly earmark)jobs, they aren’t even permanent – with the exception of the 600,000 government jobs – those will be permanent.

    Remember how we all thought the spending of the past 8 years would hurt the economy (and we were right). Well now we are to believe, the problem was that the government didn’t spend ENOUGH. This spending works out to $6700 per household – not sure how that works out if you factor in the 40% of households that pay NO taxes, but if they want to stimulate the economy and have that kind of money to throw around, how about sending it back to US – instead of adding it to our tax bill.