My First Tirade FEB 2001

George W Bush is hurting the Economy.. Every time he talks about that damn "light on his dash board", (it's his economic indicator) my confidence goes down.

The Consumer Confidence Index is a predictor of economic health.
When Confidence is up the National economy prospers and we have Economic Expansion.
When Confidence is down we have a declining Economy... a.k.a. Recession

The CCI has been high for the past eight years. Under the Democratic Administration of President Bill Clinton we had a continuously expanding economy and a lot of people got wealthy. Confidence was UP!

During August of last year the markets were rising. The National Political Conventions were held. After Labor Day the markets peaked. THEN the realization set in that Bill was not going to be around, and that neither party had a very strong candidate. Confidence began to fall, and soon thereafter the markets.

The debates came, and the people actually started to say things like, "The Vice Presidential candidates look better than the Presidential candidates." Lets face it, we were not impressed. Confidence fell and so did the the markets. By mid October the Dow was down 11%, S&P down 12%, Nasdaq down 25%

Just before election time there was a brief rally. The Democrats were looking stronger. The day before the election marked the end of this rally. Dow only down 2%, S&P only down 6%, Nasdaq only down 19%

As we quarreled about who won Florida, confidence eroded further. Bush celebrated his victory in the Supreme Court, and proceeded to make some disparaging comments about the state of the economy he was inheriting from the Democrats. He should have been looking in the mirror for the answer. He did not inspire confidence

Confidence continued to fall and the day before Christmas the Dow was down 6%, S&P down 16%, Nasdaq down 45%.

Fortunately in January, Alan Greenspan intervened, and cut interest rates. Things started looking up.
By Jan 24 the Nasdaq was UP 15.7% year to date!
BUT
George had been on the job for only two days. He immediately got to work to fix the economy. He polished his tax cut proposal for a week or so. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq is falling. When he sent it to Congress, the market celebrated for 20 minutes, then continued on down.

The 15% Greenspan rally on Nasdaq was totally erased by Feb 9. The Dow and S&P are both posting 0.9% YTD after their recent declines.

Here's the problem. The consumers, us middle class folks, are not inspired to confidence by tax cuts to the wealthy. The rich put their tax cuts in "Leakproof Lockboxes", and Nothing Trickles Down.

It's Saturday Feb. 10 2001 and someone on the TV just used the "R" word.

Now I'm developing into a pessimist, and that's not good either.

I'm hunkering down for now.