September 28, 2013

Obama's Economy: The DJIA or Reality?

By W.A. Beatty
Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama supporters proudly point to the increased Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) as an indicator of how his economic policies have succeeded.   It had a high value in 2008, of 13,044.  The 2012 DJIA high was 13,610, representing a 4.3% gain.  But, as Paul Harvey used to say, "this is the rest of the story." The DJIA is an index of thirty stock prices, but the thirty stocks are subject to change and manipulation.  Manipulation?  How?  There are three factors at work here: (1) the stocks picked, (2) the nature of the DJIA and how its value is calculated, and (3) its makeup. First, the editors of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), owned by Dow Jones & Co, pick the stocks constituting the DJIA.  There are currently fifteen editors, all people who are, just like us, bombarded daily with political propaganda.  It's interesting to note that nine of them received their undergraduate education from...(Read Full Article)