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Tax cuts make a lot of sense. The GOP's highly principled, widely celebrated and fetishistic tax cuts will stimulate the economy for four hundred people.

Today's WSJ: "The nation's top 400 taxpayers made more than $263 million on average in 2006, as the stock market was rallying, but paid income taxes at the lowest rate in the 15 years that the Internal Revenue Service has tracked such data, according to figures released Thursday. [...] Of the 400 taxpayers, 31 paid taxes at average rates between 0% and 10%."

That's $263 million each.

{ 3:29 PM }

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Keeping score. This is one of the few chances we get to judge a pair of opposing-party, two-term presidents back to back. We limit our judgment to objective, quantitative, market-driven data.

If the sum total of Americans assets is a portfolio, the president is like a portfolio manager — so let's look at how well they performed, using the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a yardstick.

PRESIDENT   DJIA Before   DJIA After     8-YR CHANGE

Clinton       3,255.99     10,587.59     + 325.2 percent

Bush 43       10,587.59     8,281.22     - 21.7 percent

To review: if you had invested $1000 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks during Clinton's first inauguration, you would have had $3252 by Bush 43's first inauguration. The Clinton presidency gave you an average gain of 40.65 percent for each of his eight years in office.

If you had invested $1000 in the DJIA stocks during Bush 43's inauguration, you would have lost more than one out of every five dollars, leaving you with only $783 today. The Bush 43 presidency lost you an annual average of 2.72% for each of his eight years in office.

Similar results are obtainable with the S&P 500 index. The effect on the Nasdaq index is even more pronounced but we're ignoring it here because of the preponderance of 1990's Internet bubble stocks on that exchange.

Further observations along these lines are here.

{ 11:31 AM }

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Fire sale on the USA. The net result of his administration makes the point quite clearly: whenever Bush talked about the "ownership society," he was ultimately referring to wealthy foreigners buying up the United States (InvestmentNews):

January 12, 2009

Foreign investors plan to spend significantly more money on U.S. real estate in 2009 than they did last year.

A study released today by the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate showed that equity investors plan to boost real estate investment activity by 73% in the United States and 40% globally.

“Our investor members have expressed a growing confidence and interest in U.S. real estate,” James A. Fetgatter, chief executive of the Washington-based association, said in a statement. “Their investment plans for 2009 for the U.S. resemble the flight to quality that is creating the demand for U.S. Treasuries.”

The 17th annual study surveyed about 200 of the association’s members, who collectively hold $1 trillion worth of real estate.

Washington topped the list of cities in which foreign investors are most likely to park their cash this year. [...]

The study showed that half of investors’ favorite cities for investing in real estate this year are in the United States.

This differs from a year ago, when five of the top 10 cities were in Asia.

The top U.S. cities were Washington, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston.

Investors named apartments as their favorite property type. That was followed by office, industrial, retail and hotel properties.

Also, most investors said that they are having little trouble finding attractive U.S. real estate opportunities.

Heckuva job, Greenspan, Gramm, and Bushie!

{ 10:10 AM }

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