So if the American Economy turns out to be a computer game

[Jon Miller]

I also, still makes it a foolish comment but perhaps better.

JM

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I also, still makes it a foolish comment but perhaps better.

JM

If so, my bad.

However, the Dow fell just as far at teh beginning of Reagan's first term, and much, much farther at the beginning of FDR's. Curiously, it did just fine under Wilson, so who knows wtf that comment was about.

[Zkribbler]

Interestingly, Obama's drop of 20 percent since Inaugeration day is the worst performance of any president since Wilson, ...

Obama inherited an economy in freefall. Don't blame the fireman for the fire.

PS: You forgot about the drops in the market under Hoover and Reagan.

[Lorizael]

Don't blame the fireman for the fire.

Unless they get paid by the fire.

[Darius871]

The trouble is Congress really does think there is a cheat menu they can open up to give us more gold.

Yeah, it's called inflation.

[Elok]

We can't just quit the game until StarCraft II comes out and we can all explode alien bugs instead?

[DaShi]

Obama inherited an economy in freefall. Don't blame the fireman for the fire.

PS: You forgot about the drops in the market under Hoover and Reagan.

The Daily Show did a great bit this week on using the DOW to rate Obama. Not surprised to see Ben do it seriously.

[Ben Kenobi]

PS: You forgot about the drops in the market under Hoover and Reagan.

What drop?

Dow from Jan 16th of 1981 was at 973, hit a low of 935 and then rebounded. That's a 4 percent drop.

Hoover had the massive run up in 1929 to the peak in July.

We are talking from the Inaugeration only, onwards, not the drops during their presidency. Right now Obama has a head start on everyone but Wilson.

[Ben Kenobi]

I thought he was talking about drops in the Dow (which I haven't, and won't, fact-checked), not in approval ratings.

Yes sir.

Dow on Jan 21st, was at 8228.10

12 year low hit today was 6469.95

That is a drop of 21.37 percent.

All I can find on Wilson is that there was a drop of 10 percent for the year from 1913-1914.

For Carter it went from 1004 to 747, the bottom a year later from January of 1977 to March of 1978, a drop of 25.6 percent for market peak to trough. By this point in Carter's presidency, it had only dropped about 7 percent. For the year it had dropped only 17 percent from January of 1977 to January of 1978.

So Obama is well ahead of the Carter schedule.

Hoover had a drop from January of 1929 to January of 1930 of about 16 percent. So the second worst presidential inaugeration year.

If we look at the Obama to Hoover schedule, Obama is about in the middle of the great crash, so he's about 10 months ahead of Hoover.

[Verto]

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[Jon Miller]

at Ben

JM