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Political Gridlock May Not Be So Good
Tweet Share on Facebook October 31, 2006 Comment (12)A month ago at this time, political analyst Mark Melcher was "moderately confident" that the Republicans would hold the House and Senate. Today, Melcher, who for years tracked politics and policy for a major Wall Street investment firm and now puts out the Political Forum newsletter (a must-read for the big-money crowd), thinks the Democrats will probably take the House next week. Not that he's thrilled about that prospect–he admittedly leans to the right. But Melcher's not in a panic, either.
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A Bad Time to Return to Rubinomics?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 30, 2006 CommentDemocratic candidates have been running as fiscal hawks this election season, lambasting Republicans as a bunch of free spenders who mismanaged the Clinton surpluses into the Bush deficits. It seems as if they are arguing for a return to Rubinomics, the economic theory named after President Clinton's second treasury secretary, Robert Rubin.
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Ask Sallie Who Will Win the Midterms
Tweet Share on Facebook October 27, 2006 Comment (28)Today's GDP number was the last big economic report before the election. But that top-line number showing that growth slowed to 1.6 percent from May to September vs. 2.6 percent in the previous quarter isn't the one to watch–at least not if you are trying guess what voters will be thinking on November 7. Drill a little deeper and you'll find that:
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Wall Street's Take on the Midterm Elections
Tweet Share on Facebook October 26, 2006 CommentWhat is Wall Street's perspective on what might happen November 7? Here are the key takeaways from a Prudential Securities conference call held yesterday by the firm's Washington research term.
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Bernanke's 12 Big Words
Tweet Share on Facebook October 25, 2006 Comment"Going forward, the economy seems likely to expand at a moderate pace." Those dozen words constitute almost the entire difference in the Federal Reserve's policy statement today and the one issued last month. (This statement also downplays energy prices as a source of inflation.) And like last month, the Fed's Open Market Committee decided to leave short-term interest rates alone.
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Is Good Economic News Good for Democrats?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 24, 2006 Comment (13)So which game is the chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers playing? In a newspaper interview published today, Edward Lazear said that the housing slowdown will affect "a very significant chunk" of the economy's growth in the third quarter–3Q GDP comes out Friday–and that the slowdown is "going to hit us."
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The Budget's Missing $240 Billion
Tweet Share on Facebook October 23, 2006 CommentBy all accounts, Republicans—including President Bush—are going to start talking up the economy big time as a way of improving their chances of holding on to one or both houses of Congress. And there's a lot of meat to their argument, what with the Dow Jones industrial average climbing to new highs and unemployment at the lowest levels of the Bush presidency. But if there is one area that even die-hard Republicans kvetch about, it's spending. As budget expert Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation points out, federal spending has jumped 45 percent since 2001, with defense and homeland security accounting for less than one third of the increase. Education has increased 137 percent, international spending 111 percent, and health research and regulation 78 percent.
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A GOP Surprise Courtesy of Investors?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 20, 2006 Comment (19)If you go by the political betting markets—not to mention those devastating polls—the GOP has about the same chance (30 percent or so) of keeping House of Representatives under Republican control as the United States does of catching Osama bin Laden or of bombing Iran by the end of next year. (But it has twice as good a chance as Joey Lawrence does of winning Dancing With the Stars, natch!) Yet there goes White House political adviser Karl Rove this week predicting the GOP will hold both the House and the Senate. (A veteran Washington watcher and money guy snarked to me, "I wonder if this is the same version of Rove that predicted an easy victory for Bush in 2000 and had him taking a victory lap in California.")
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Why Wall Street Doesn't Fear Speaker Pelosi
Tweet Share on Facebook October 19, 2006 CommentIt seems ever more likely that the Democrats will capture one or possibly both houses of Congress. But the Big Money crowd on Wall Street seems as if they couldn't care less. The Dow Jones industrial average is up 2.3 percent since the Mark Foley scandal broke, an event reversing a monthlong buildup of GOP political momentum. That, even though studies show investors–including this new one out of Stanford and Wharton business schools–tend to prefer Republicans over Democrats.
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An Economic Agenda for Republicans
Tweet Share on Facebook October 18, 2006 CommentNo matter what happens on November 7, America is going to end up with a de facto divided government. Even should the GOP keep control of the House and Senate, it would likely be by the narrowest of margins. Most analysts think voters should expect nothing but gridlock for the next two years. So for the heck of it, I asked a couple of pretty smart guys–one on the left, one on the right–what their dream economic agendas would be for the Democrats and Republicans, within broad political reason.
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