Market

For someone who aggressively campaigned on the notion that the Republican party cares disproportionately about the rich, President Obama’s economic scorecard is rather illuminating.  Since March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average — which tracks the stock prices of 30 large blue-chip companies — has risen 116 percent (from 6,627 to 14,329).  That’s an increase of about 100 percent in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars.  Since that same point, however, real median American household income — the income of the typical American family — has dropped 6 percent and $3,168 (from $54,752 to $51,584, according to Census Bureau figures compiled by Sentier Research).  What’s more, the portion of Americans who are employed has dropped by 1.3 percentage points (from 59.9 percent to 58.6 percent, according to the federal government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics). 

It turns out that — as most Americans are able to intuit — the big government-big business alliance benefits the big guy.  Indeed, it turns out that centralizing power, stacking the deck against the American people through heavy-handed regulation and cronyism, and then magnanimously redistributing some portion of the I-95 bounty (through the tax code and otherwise) isn’t actually an effective solution to income inequality.  Rather, this approach — an example of trickle-down economics if ever there was one — has managed to undermine growth and equality simultaneously.

A far better approach would be to decentralize power, stop the rampant favoritism that centralization guarantees, and promote a dynamic economy in which Americans are free to use their talents and industry and keep the fruits of their own labor — as is their unalienable right. 

Until now, most forecasters have been framing the assumptions underlying their projections on what they assume a reelected Barack Obama would do about taxes, appointments to the Federal Reserve Board, spending, the deficit and a host of other policies. Suddenly, they are back to the drawing board. Polls are showing something inconceivable to the American media and foreign observers: Mitt Romney is closing in on the president, and might even hold a slight lead.

A cynic would be tempted to compare the eurozone to Ryou-Un Mara, the rusty Japanese ghost ship that floated across the Pacific after last year’s earthquake. Some wrecks surprise us by staying afloat for a long time, but that does not make them less of a wreck.