A Mortifying Picture of the S & P 500

Words can be powerful.  An image or, in this case, a chart, can be even more so.

The chart released by the Club For Growth shows the Standard and Poor’s (S & P) 500 Index in chart form, below: it reflects the status of the 500 leading companies in leading industries of the U.S. economy, capturing 75% coverage of U.S. equities, showing that President Obama’s third year in office is the worst of any president’s third year in office since S & P began keeping records.

Although much emphasis has been placed on the nation’s high unemployment numbers, less press attention has focussed on the tanking of the S & P 500 in this,  the third year of the Obama Presidency.  S & P has made this study since 1957, and released the third year figures for all presidencies beginning with Nixon’s in 1971.

As the chart below vividly illustrates, there has been nothing remotely comparable to present conditions in recent memory:

If I were the in charge of the Republican National Committee, I would plaster that chart on everything I could possibly afford, from babies’ t-shirts to billboards to national TV commercials during the Super Bowl to full-page ads in a few well-chosen newspapers — i.e., not The New York Times, or any newspaper owned by the New York Times Company.

I would do all I could to make sure every voter understands the sinkhole our nation and its economy is in, and urge voters to think of that chart and of the millions of jobless Americans on November 6, 2012 and every day between now and then.

Enjoy your 17-day vacation in Hawaii, Barry.  The country is doubtless better off the further you are from your desk in the Oval Office.  Three years of your sitting there have yielded the opposite of hope.  That would be despair.