Obama's Been Good For The Stock Market

The constant Republican theme (repeated endlessly by Willard Mitt Romney) of this campaign has been that President Obama is somehow bad for the business community. Well, the chart above puts the lie to that. Instead of holding back business in America, the president seems to have done quite well in getting the economy back on track. At least, that is the opinion of those who invest in stocks in this country. The chart shows the growth in the stock market under every president since 1900 (as represented by the change in the Dow Jones Industrials during the first 1,368 days in office of each president).

You will note that President Obama has out-performed all but four of those 17 presidents in stock market growth. Here are the top ten presidents, and the stock market growth while they were president:

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt..........229.5%

2. Bill Clinton..........88.0%

3. Calvin Coolidge..........86.2%

4. Dwight D. Eisenhower..........68.8%

5. Barack Obama..........67.9%

6. George W. Bush..........42.6%

7. Woodrow Wilson..........31.5%

8. Ronald Reagan..........29.0%

9. Lyndon Johnson..........28.2%

10. Gerald Ford..........23.8%

Also note that Ronald Reagan, the president that right-wingers would deify as being the best president for business, is only eighth on the list (and nearly 39 points behind President Obama). But then the truth doesn't mean much to right-wingers (or the Ryan/Romney ticket), and I'm sure that facts aren't going to shake their belief in the myths they've created.