Why the Left Is Furious at Lieberman; Iraq is only a part

Foxfyre, this is ridiculous.

There were a couple of troughs lasting a few weeks, and a peak which lasted a month or so. As you can plainly see, most of the weeks were right in the 10,500 to 11,000 range, or very close to it.

You're trying desperately to find something wrong, and there really wasn't.

Nobody could have foreseen the bear market that resulted from 9/11.....

Foxfyre wrote:

Nobody could have foreseen the bear market that resulted from 9/11.....

As I've just illustrated, the short-lived "bear market" caused by 9/11 was all over by the end of October of that year. Only a month and a half later.

The real bear market started in late May of 2002, many months after the market had fully recovered from the events of 9/11.

The market opened at 10,106.5 the week of May 31, 2002-a year and a half into the Bush Jr. era- and went down to 7,422.28 the week of October 4, 2002. It didn't get back to 10,000 until December of 2003!

I will concede there was a short lived rally in the Dow in the months following 9/11.

This was almost inevitable as where else were the investors going to go?

You have to understand that most investors are not long term investors.

"Today's event was smaller than Joe's support for the primary. Ned Lamont won the unionized workers' vote 55 to 45 based on New York Times exit polls," Swan said of the primary.

Foxfyre wrote:

You have to understand that most investors are not long term investors.

I don't know if this is true or not. But it doesn't matter: the stock market is not a democracy. Its prices don't react to the number of investors -- they react to the number of dollars being invested. Certainly most of the money on the stock market is handled by large institutional investors such as banks and retirement funds. These are long term investors.

The investment business was booming as 2005 came to a close. Private equity investments, venture capital investments and IPOs (initial public offerings) have been briskly moving ahead, while individual investors have regained confidence in stock markets. Globally, there is an astonishing amount of capital looking for a place to land, and corporations are sitting on vast amounts of cash as well. Investment markets have clearly rebounded, regaining ground from spectacular losses in 2000-2002. Long-term interest rates have remained relatively low, despite the fact that the Federal Reserve had been continually raising short-term rates in 2005. Cross-border investing is extremely active, including record-high purchases of foreign equities by U.S. investors, and merger and acquisition activity by multinational corporations and equity funds.

Meanwhile, investment bankers and stock brokerages seem to have put the stock market crash, stock analyst woes and accountability problems of 2000-2002 behind them. Investment banks were earning tremendous profits as of the end of 2005. Online trading has rebounded as consumers of all types have become more trusting of managing their financial accounts over the Internet.

Venture capitalists are very active, but at lower levels than during the boom of the 1995-2000. The fact that IPOs once again offer a viable exit strategy is encouraging venture activity. Meanwhile, venture investments are soaring in the business centers of India and China.

Corporate merger and acquisition (M&A) activity is running at a high rate in the U.S. and abroad. Low interest rates are contributing to this trend, since they make it less painful to issue new debt associated with an acquisition. Meanwhile, private equity funds have been extremely active in the M&A sector.

Individual investors in general have regained faith in their stock portfolios, mutual fund investments and 401(k)s, although many have lowered their expectations of future returns on their investments. Others have turned to real estate for a large portion of their portfolios, snapping up rental houses, bigger primary residences and second homes, and driving up home values in the process. The condominium market has been particularly robust in cities like Miami and Las Vegas, where individuals bought new properties in hopes of selling them quickly at a profit. However, rising interest rates and saturated markets may soon put an end to the real estate boom.

Corporate profits were strong in the 2004-2005 period as well. Profits from banks and other lending institutions are high. Wall Street's image was only briefly tarnished by investor lawsuits and analyst scandals after the stock market crash of 2000-2001. A more recent scandal in the mutual funds industry seems to have had little effect on the appetites of investors for well-managed funds. The stock market is still where most investors focus their portfolios, and Wall Street holds the key to the markets.

The investment sector as a whole has clearly returned to health. However, several threats remain in the background, including worries about potential inflation, terrorism or political upheaval as well as persistently high U.S. federal deficits, and high levels of consumer debt.

Connecticut U.S. Senate: Joe 45%, Ned 43%, Alan 6%

August 28, 2006

Joe Lieberman is holding on to a slight lead in Connecticut's United States Senate race, according to the latest poll by Rasmussen Reports. 45 per cent of respondents would vote for the current member of the upper house, who is running as an independent. Democrat Ned Lamont is second with 43 per cent, followed by Republican Alan Schlesinger with six per cent.

A mid-August poll by American Research Group also gave Lieberman a two-point edge over Lamont. [Lieberman 44%, Lamont 42%, Schlesinger 3%]

I am sorry to steal BernardR's fire, as I'm sure he was eager to share the last Rasmussen Reports opinion poll with you all, but since I am here first..

Looks to be shaping up as a very close race. The advantage for Lamont could be the desire of a percentage of Democrats that may desire to see a "Democrat" in the Senate, vs an individual that most often agrees with them. If the same thing happened on the Republican side, I would have to think long and hard to vote for a man that does not help my side's numbers, and also for a man that might tend to stray more often to the Democratic side. In this case, Lieberman might have more of a tendency to vote more often with Republicans than he did before this whole chain of events wherein his own party has thrown him under the bus.

That's the irony of this. Lieberman's voting record was pretty darn liberal and he was with the Democrats on all but a very very few issues. There was no problem until he sided with the President on the war in Iraq and the War on Terrorism. The Democrats couldn't have that, so he was promptly back stabbed and discarded.

Mrs. Clinton Offers to Raise Money for Lamont Campaign

Foxfyre wrote:

That's the irony of this. Lieberman's voting record was pretty darn liberal and he was with the Democrats on all but a very very few issues. There was no problem until he sided with the President on the war in Iraq and the War on Terrorism. The Democrats couldn't have that, so he was promptly back stabbed and discarded.

Nonsense. There's a whole list of Democratic Senators and Congressmen who have a more conservative voting record than Lieberman had, and who have voted with the majority on military issues too, yet who have not been challenged like Lieberman was.

The reasons why are simple enough.

- It wasnt just that Lieberman veered from the party line, it was that he used the most pernicious of the neocon rhetorics to do so - the kind that directly harmed the Democratic Party. His last nonsense that the Lamont victory emboldens the terrorists is merely typical.

- Lieberman is the Senator of Connecticut. He therefore has a responsibility to represent the interests, opinions and preferences of the people from Connecticut. Whether you say that he should be accountable to the Democrats from Connecticut or the people from Connecticut overall, makes no difference - the outcome is the same: he's out of step with his own electorate. Connecticut voters, Dem or otherwise, do not share his preference for sabre-rattling in Iraq and feel strongly about that. So, they're voting him out. And?

Salazar, the Democratic Senator from Colorado, Baucus, from Montana, Ben Nelson, from Nebraska, or your typical Dem Senator from the Dakotas (there's three) are more conservative than Lieberman, and have been as conservative as him on war & terror issues as well -- and yet they have not been "promptly back stabbed and discarded".

But represent one of the most liberal states in the Union as a Democrat, and then take on a high profile right next to Bush on exactly the kind of issue that people from your state would get passionate about - then you get in trouble. Thats a duh thing, and doesnt prove anything about some meme of how "the Dems will backstab and discard you as soon as you stop toeing the line".

(And thats not even to mention that the Dem establishment, rather than "backstabbing and discarding" Lieberman, throughout the primary and the run-up to it have tried to stop Lamont and buttress Lieberman...)

Nice posts there, Nimh.

From the tone of their posts, Foxfyre and Okie seem to think that primaries for incumbents are somehow immoral, or something. Nope, that's just democracy.