I have read a number of right-wing articles on the decline of the stock market on Wednesday, November 7, 2012. In their usual incisive way, they see this as a referendum on Mr. Obama delivered by Wall Street.
Then somehow they get themselves to believe - and we understand now that they will believe anything that seems to support their dreams - that all business is going to heck in a hand basket just because Mr. Obama won an election.
First of all, Business: businesses have been laying off people and closing branches quite steadily. The is always Growth and Attrition. To remind Republicans of one of their favorite info-nibbles when Republicans are in power and people lose their jobs, our capitalistic system is a system of "Creative Destruction".
Of course, one may expect the Koch Brothers to be forced to lay people off, even though it pains them to do so, because they predicted that businesses would lay off thousands if their employees had the temerity to vote for Mr. Obama.
Whatever layoffs they had planned will now go through, and would have gone through if Mr. Romney had won. It would be good to lay those people off in about a month, just before Christmas. The extra pain would underscore the Republican ability to predict layoffs that they had already planned on before the election.
The stock market has been trending down for the past two weeks.
I fully expected a down day, because a number of right-wingers held onto their stocks, thinking Romney would win, and then suddenly everything would be cool again, and the P/E ratios would have nowhere to go but up.
Mr. Obama won: they dumped their stocks. It has happened before. Markets go up and down, for pity's sake; up and down. It is the nature of markets.
A 300+ point decline because some true-blue right-wingers held onto stocks, then dumped them so they could say "Told ya so!" is hardly comparable in quantity nor quality to the 500+ point decline in August 2, 2011 when the Republican Party and its Tea Party Obscurantists refused to deal with the budget.
I have a very strong suspicion that Republicans will learn nothing by 2016, except to be more devious in disguising their unusual beliefs about rape, incest, the Big Bang, Science, and the Anti-Christ.
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4 comments:
Excellent assessment.
And no doubt the rest of the world and its markets know that Reps are not likely to cooperate about the fiscal cliff. I sorta want to slide off that "cliff" and see what happens. I may not like my taxes raised, but I want government services.
You really think they won't get it by next time? You're probably right.
Some will, but I think most will not.
They cannot conceive of Life as a game wherein all players may win: there must be winners and there must be losers.
This bit of Game Theory is the inspiration for the Country Club Philosophy of the 47%, the remarks about Santa Claus having won the election, and so on: Life is seen as winners and losers.
Life can be played with cooperation instead of ruthless competition, but they never learned that lesson, neither in their heads nor their hearts.
Note: that "cliff" is more like a big speed bump at first.
As Paul Krugman pointed out, the "cliff" agreement will direct policy for the future, whereas the 2011 debacle about the government defaulting on its obligations was right now: the government does not pay and right this minute!
Very insightful point about the game of winners and losers!
And also about the difference in immediacy of the two fiscal crises.
BTW, here's a great Frank Rich assessment of the post-fact era of Reps:
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/gop-denial-2012-11/
That's a great article, and any writer of satire must be thanking God above for this harvest of Idiocy called Republicanism!
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