Right now the Dow Industrial Average sits at 11,096; the day President Obama was elected the Dow closed at 7,552. According to the New York Times, corporate profits (I assume these are for public companies) have returned to pre-recession levels. And, U.S. corporations are sitting on about $3 trillion in cash. The new GOP buzzword to explain this anomaly is, "uncertainty". I received my MBA way back in 1989 but I'm pretty sure I was taught that running a business is risky (things are uncertain).
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but I'm imagining John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, the right wing talking heads and the Executive Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce walking around brushing the sides of their noses with an index finger (remember the movie, "The Sting"?) and winking. The plan is to hold the economy captive by keeping all that cash idle. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (and conservative columnists like the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer - is he a token conservative?) wails that no one knows how the following will affect corporate profits (i.e. "uncertainty") : (a) the health care bill; (b) finance reform; (c) income tax rates for 2011. If it weren't for the uncertainty about these three things cash would be flowing, people would have jobs and we'd all be buying Hummers and 6,000 square foot homes with interest only mortgages again.
So here's how the con will end up. The minute that the GOP takes control of Congress all "uncertainty" will disappear (because the GOP has been bought and paid for), cash will flow, people will be hired, etc., etc.. The GOP will proclaim that their policies brought about this new era of good fortune thereby guaranteeing Obama will be a one-term president. And all this before they have a chance to not fund the provisions of the health care bill and to gut financial reform.
How's that for crazy? We'll discuss this again come spring.
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