Excuses, Excuses

by Steven M. Cohen  •  Mar 2, 2009 at 9:14 am

http://www.buyselljump.com/2009/03/excuses-excuses

So today it's fear over the new AIG plan. Last week it was concern over the bank bailout plan and the Citi news. The week before that it was worries over whether the "stimulus" bill would be adequate to rescuscitate the economy. Oh, and somewhere in there were the mortgage and auto bailouts--it all begins to merge together in a thick haze, like a bad dream the details of which you can't quite remember in the morning.

All of these explanations miss the larger point. The market trades down every day, and markedly so, each time something comes out of this new administration. Whether it's Geithner bombing in front of Congress, or the president delivering a stern, finger-wagging lecture intertwined with his bloated budget proposal, it's obviously not a coincidence that the market tanks as the administration reveals its plans.

Bottom line: Investors hate the administration's economic policies. It couldn't be more clear, yet talking-head commentators, market gurus and economic professors keep offering somewhat irrelevant explanations while missing the big picture.

Guess what? Investors don't like the new president's anti-business, populist, class-warfare message. They don't like his incessant flogging of Wall Street and business leaders every opportunity he gets, even in the course of his first address to Congress. They don't care for the unimagineable levels of spending called for by the multiple bailouts and budget proposal.

That's the real point. When will the so-called market and economic experts in the business media confront it directly? The administration is engaged in a giant social engineering experiment at the expense of constructive, meaningful approaches to fix the economy, like genuine tax relief and reining in grotesque levels of spending.

The administration evidently feels that we can have an economic recovery in spite of the collapse of the stock market. It won't happen.

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