One leading economic indicator wasn’t impressed by today’s festivities, as Reuters notes:
U.S. stock indexes extended losses and hit session lows on Tuesday after President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech provided few new details about measures to tackle the growing economic crisis.
“I think people were looking for something, new plans, new hopes,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatam, New Jersey.
“They didn’t hear something new.”
To be fair, an inauguration speech isn’t exactly the place to lay out a new administration’s fiscal agenda, but still, between this, Ted Kennedy passing out, the racially charged benediction from Rev. Joseph Lowery, whatever caused Rahm to flip the Emanuel, and the jeering of the incoming president’s supporters at the outgoing commander-in-chief, there were lots of fumbles during the ecstasy.
Update: Perhaps this (via the Professor) helps to explain today’s market swoon: “In the mind of the anti-free-marketeer, the government occupies the same kind of intellectual territory as the divine designer in the mind of an anti-Darwinian.”
More” The temperature wasn’t the only thing icy in DC today. Witness: “The awesomely awesome Carter/Clinton snub“–complete with video!
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