Obama: Has he lost Wall Street’s confidence?

The Dow has plunged more than 15 percent since Inauguration Day in spite of the stimulus bill and the bailouts to the banking and mortgage industries. 

The public may still have confidence in Barack Obama, said George Bittlingmayer and Thomas Hazlett in the Chicago Tribune, but investors and Wall Street clearly do not. Since taking office, Obama has rammed through a $787 billion stimulus bill, and bailed out banks to the tune of $1.2 trillion and the mortgage industry with

$275 billion. Yet this huge “pump-priming effort” has yielded only more bad news. Yes, markets briefly rallied this week on news that Citigroup would make a profit. But the Dow has still plunged more than 15 percent since Inauguration Day, from 8,280 to about 6,900. Some $1.5 trillion in wealth has been lost, and “investors are losing patience with federal fixes.” Obama may have inherited a mess, said

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us