Obama faulted as indifferent on stocks

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By Donald Lambro

Some Wall Street economists think President Obama could have voiced some sympathy about the plight of frightened shareholders when he compared the stock market's plunge to an election tracking poll that "bobs up and down, day to day."

They worry that the president is underestimating the important role the stock market plays in the economy's performance, and that the markets' precipitous slide is actually a vote of no confidence in the administration's handling of the economy. There's also a suspicion that Mr. Obama and his advisers think only wealthy people own stocks.

"There is some of that feeling that rich people are the ones who have stocks. He does have somewhat of that feeling. But you've got to remember that most people who own stocks aren't rich," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's, the influential Wall Street financial research and forecasting firm.

With the stock market in a practical free fall since he was sworn in to office Jan. 20, Mr. Obama seemed to dismiss the plunge in equities Tuesday in an Oval Office conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suggesting that he was unconcerned about Wall Street's daily fluctuations.

"What I'm looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations in the stock market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing," he said.

"The stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics, it bobs up and down, day to day. And if you spend all of your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong," he told reporters.

But Mr. Wyss and some of his colleagues on Wall Street - where investors have lost trillions of dollars in savings and the market is not so much bobbing as dropping straight down - think Mr. Obama could have shown more concern for the markets, which represent the economy and signal its future direction.

"I suspect he didn't dismiss campaign tracking polls when he was running for president. Even though it may have the same day-to-day bounces, I'm sure he was watching the tracking polls when he was running," Mr. Wyss said in a telephone interview with The Washington Times.

"I agree with him that you can't obsess about it day to day, but you cannot ignore it, because it's telling you something," he said.

Harm Bandholz, an economist at UniCredit Research in New York, called this attitude toward the stock market, "one of the big problems with the administration, that they underestimate the role of the stock market in the current recession, because without the stabilization or recovery of the stock market, the U.S. economy won't be able to get out of this recession."