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Fooled Ya!
The Dow dropped 3 percent last week. Today it is also sinking on reports from the World Bank and others that a supposed recovery later this year may be delayed for quite awhile longer.
Could this be the end of the bull run that began in March and has featured the biggest percentage market jump in more than 70 years? One sure sign that this may be the case is a story on today’s Bloomberg website that tells of “insiders” (CEOs of large publicly traded companies) bailing out of their own stock holdings and cashing in on the stock surge of the last four months. One suspects these people may know something.
If in coming weeks it turns out that all the talk of green shoots and glimmers and stabilization from market heavies and government officials was wishing thinking at best or just plain hokum, what might be the consequences of this short burst of market euphoria? I think it may prove a mixed blessing, but with a greater overall downside.
This run up has had some good effects beyond enriching people already quite rich. Sales of newly issued bank stocks has improved these institutions’ books, supplementing government infusions of cash. The same is true for Wall Street firms, and better financial conditions have allowed these companies to retain some staff that would otherwise have been laid off. Mutual funds and pension funds that took such huge hits when the market plummeted last year have come back a bit. Consumer confidence has improved because of the market upturn, always a good thing for the economy.
So then, what’s the likely downsides of this four month run up? The obvious one, of course, is that people suckered in by all the happy talk from government officials and economists and Wall Street analysts will realize losses on top of the losses they incurred from the huge 2008 slide. But worse, far worse, is what it could mean for the Obama Administration’s credibility.
In his first couple of months in office President Obama was very clear about the mess he had inherited and the likelihood that it would take a long time to bring things back to anything even approximating pre-2008 economic conditions. Then the best and brightest in his own administration and The Street pushed him to appear more optimistic. Their rap, in essence, was jolly people up with happy talk and the problems would solve themselves.
Already, according to some surveys, about a third of Americans believe their economic troubles are Obama’s fault. If the market tanks again from here, a great many more people will blame the green shoot and glimmers president for deceiving them, and his credibility will tank as well.
And the last ting we need just now is a president with vastly diminished credibility on the economy.
16 Responses to “Fooled Ya!”
To be fair, most industry leaders have publicly said that they didn't see much in the way of increasing economic activity (e.g. this).
Your concern about Obama's credibility is exactly mine, and in fact I was worried about that back in October before he was even elected. I figured that if there was a pause in the plunge, it'd come at the worst possible time as they would stop focusing on reform and preparedness, and then when it did occur he'd have little political backing.
Even more to the point, if the stock market keeps falling it's just doing what it's “supposed” to based on patterns.
Well, Mikkel, looks like we're back to our prior timing discussion. But, the actual events may be unfolding
as we discussed a month or so ago.
What pushed the market down was the further recent government meddling. What might seem to be pro-consumer stuff to some is market-translated into anti-business stuff. It is also now apparent the Obama administration really doesn't have a firm grasp, so anytime Obama toys again, the market will drop again.
Tell him to stay out of the private sector, let some genuine operating results emerge (whatever they turn out to be) and the market will continue to move upwards.
Yes, well we were talking about a pretty drastic series of events. The market could easily fall back to its lows, a major bank is taken over, a European country needs to be bailed out by the IMF, etc. and that still wouldn't count for me. You and I were talking about systemic failure which I agree with you could theoretically be staved off for a few years. However that will require immense political cooperation both internationally and domestically, which I am just very pessimistic that can be pulled off. Obama has way overplayed his hand (by not changing course) to the point that even most left-leaning opinion seems to be against further government intervention and general mocking of the government's claims about what is good for the economy.
Peter Schiff on the Daily Show was a perfect example. Jon Stewart basically said that he was so scared before but realized that nothing had changed other than the money flowing to the worst segments of society and the audience was basically cheering the prospect of the downfall of the FIRE system.
Government meddling is a lot of what pushed the market up…it'd be 25% lower at least without it. This down leg will be due to global outlook and unless a couple of credit regulations is making the world quake and have production decline at faster than the great depression then it has nothing to do with the government actions. People were insane to buy into the market so high, that's it.
As if the banking fiasco (and federally managed consolidation that rewards favored insiders) wasn't enough…
The earlier bold claims of Team Obama were shown to be a laugh when the actual results were reported, along with the revelation that yes, these guys are experimenting and guessing, and the guessing is all that their bold claims and predictions rely on. Meanwhile, the public is concerned about the finances not only of the stimulus but of the federal government in general (Obama's hyped savings amount to one-half per cent, don't forget) and at the same time, the feds are meddling in industry (federalizing GM being the most notorious example) and are rushing to do this in health care, while the financial reforms have one or two good features (capitalization requirements harken back to what was wrong with S&Ls and is a good thing, in theory) and some spooky features (expanding the role of the Fed beyond its mission as the US's central bank; claiming the right to intervene and partition any company that is too big in their eyes, new action toward hedge funds, and a vow to work with other nations with regulation and other things, which threatens upward ratcheting and more government machinations when it comes to regulations and later, we can suspect, taxation and even an earlier attack on tax havens and such things than we would otherwise have anticipated). And though we have already been treated to vaulted new fuel efficiency requirements (with nothing but wild guesses and suppositions about how much higher fuel “will” cost in the future, on which acceptance of new, more expensive vehicles is “optimistically” predicated), we may also sometime see onerous new “alternative energy” requirements, say, for electricity generation (more wave-a-wand actually-deleterious foolishness) as well as replacement or supplementation of silly “Cap and Trade” emissions controls* with new, high fuel taxes (to induce people to buy smaller vehicles than they otherwise want, or to fund vast new entitlements including health care). Just wait until these kids, agitating for “action,” leap and carry the federal government into much, much more in this country.
It's enough (as it should be) to have many a proponent of federal health care worried.
And it's enough (as it should be) to make the market react negatively.
“Government meddling is a lot of what pushed the market up”
Maybe earlier, Mikkel. Engineering a “new” Chrysler and GM also brought relief to Detroit, earlier, too. But the bloom is off. And the concerns continue to mount.
As I've mentioned to Dorian De Wind before it's dangerous to read too much into short term market movements. This could be just a technical retreat or it could mean something more. For those interested in pattern reading the 3 month chart on SPY is showing the left shoulder and the head and is thinking about the other shoulder. Still, until you get the other shoulder you can't say it's meaningful.
I am not confident in Obama, Pelosi and Reid's economic wisdom and am worried that the deficit and new spending will be much bigger problems than they think.. The question is how many other investors agree with me.
DG and others:
Since my name was mentioned, do I detect a little “I told you so,” at the hopefully (my hopes) temporary downturn in the markets, and perhaps even some gloating for perhaps, emphasize perhaps, hoping to be proven right, in some of the comments?
Not, it couldn't be that. Never!
Let's hope as some have counselled me before, that “these are just meaningless movements of the market”
DE the market could turn around tomorrow and go through the roof. I'm not saying I told you so, I'm just saying nobody should read much into short term market movements, although pundits certainly try. Back in the days I used to listen to Hannity and Limbaugh they drove me nuts by implying every time the market went down it was due to the Democrats. It is never that simple.
Got it, DG.
Just trying to stay optimistic. Also playing devil's advocate to those who can't wait to blame “Team Obama” for not getting us out of the Bush recession fast enough
DaGoat, I agree with you. On any given day, there is simply too much information being discounted by too many people using too many different models with too many different investment objectives to identify any piece of daily information as controlling.
By the way, did I not read here a few months ago that there would be massive bank failures of massive banks and the stimulus was woefully inadequate? So, am I now to be told that Obama's woefully inadequate stimulus not only staved off that then almost guaranteed disaster but also gave the market a 25% boost?
“So, am I now to be told that Obama's woefully inadequate stimulus not only staved off that then almost guaranteed disaster but also gave the market a 25% boost?”
No. Yes.
Banks shot up 100% due to government guarantees and all the cash infusion. If you look up some analyses on the net, you'll find that that action as well as some other actions by the Fed brought down the spreads on credit and most of the “junky” stocks — i.e. companies that will have a hard time surviving if the recession lasts another year or so — grossly outperformed quality companies. That's why several observers said that the idea that this was the start of a prolonged bull market was “ludicrous.” (Barry Ritholtz used that term).
So while it may have been enough to “stave off” (the $10 trillion in Fed guarantees and $1.5 trillion injection into the system…not the stimulus) collapse, there have been no change in long term dynamics and banks are still inadequately capitalized.
Don't bother… None of the underlying socio-economic issues have been resolved or are even close to being resolved, the Financial Institutions are still to big to fail, our balance of trade is still negative, our unemployment keeps going up, our health-care system is still sub-standard and our infrastructure is still crumbling. Until you see substantial changes in any of these things, don't expect thing to get better.
A) Team Obama has not been running the show long enough to actually make a difference, you will not be able to make a honest assessment of their policies for couple of years, it takes time to change the course of the ship of state and the economy.
B) So far I have not been the slightest bit impressed by Team Obama, I think that they understand the depth of our problems, but I am pretty sure that they are unwilling to pay the political price required to fix them, therefor I expect the Obama administration to either muddle through or more likely to fail. This is not to say that the democrats will not stay in power and that Obama will not be reelected but rather to say that all of our current problems will still be with us in 2016 and most of them will be substantially worse than they are today.
The days of easy simple solutions have been over since the seventies, we still have the same problems we had in the seventies, we just kicked them down the road, and we are going to keep kicking them down the road.
Take heath-care as an example, we know what the problems are, we can also bench-mark our system against that of other countries, and when we do we notice that ours cost twice as much as theirs does and gets either similar or worse outcomes, if we were rational our conversation about health-care would be about which features of which systems we should adopt and which combination of features would get us the best health-care for the least amount of money. But we won't, my guess is that the Obama team will come up with some minor reforms which the Conservatives and Medical-Industrial complex will fight tooth and nail, this reform will be no more than a band-aid on a bleeding wound, and ten years from now we will still have the world's most expensive health-care system with same sub-standard outcomes.
DQ:
While I don't agree with everything you say, kudos for a reasoned, objective commentary.
I do hope that we will give the “Obama Team” a little longer than six months to attempt to fix the disaster that took 96 months to create, and to pick up all those cans that have been kicked down the road for even longer than that.
Dorian
By the way, I just got this e-mail from Sen. Claire McCaskill:
“I'm an optimist. That's why I have to shake my head at some of our Republican friends, who have turned negativity into an art form.
But I've said it once, and I'll say it again: Never bet against America. Never.
Here's what I think: This is the best chance we've had in generations to get America back on the right track. We have a new President in the White House. Now we need a stronger Democratic Senate to pass President Obama's agenda: better jobs, a robust economy, clean energy, health care choices and an education system worthy of our children.”
While many may disagree with most of what she says, I hope no one will disagree with her “Never bet against America. Never.”
As an optimist, but most of all as an American, I certainly won't
Dorian