The Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations
Yesterday, Ben Smith noted that Citizen Journalism had failed to meet expectations, and I would tend to agree overall- blogs are not replacing newspapers or MSM news organizations anytime soon.
On the other hand, blogs have been quite good at pointing out first-class wankery. As an example, this from James Pethokoukis:
Are investor concerns about an Obama presidency influencing the stock market? And by “concerns” I mean “existential panic.” And by “Obama presidency” I mean “a tax-hiking and regulatory reign of terror.” And by “influencing” I mean “eviscerating.” At least that’s the overwrought take I get from a few of my more skittish E-mailers. Chillax, y’all!Now a few of my own (more tranquil) observations about a possible jittery Investor Class, the plunging market, and the now famous Obama Discount Theory:
First, a general rule. Never have the foundation and starting point for any argument you want taken seriously based on skittish emails. If I were to do that, I would think that Obama is an illegal alien, a muslim, a terrorist-loving appeaser who has it in for the Jews and holds multiple citizenships with various states, including Indonesia and Kenya. And those are just from this week from Red State alerts alone.
Second, have we not been down this road before? Did we not just discuss the Goldberg Theorem at length? I seem to remember something about it:
Last Thursday, when the Dow was dropping to roughly 8,600, various right-wing polemicists claimed that the stock market was plummeting because investors were realizing that Obama would likely win and his policies would be bad for the economy. The Right’s leading intellectual historian, Jonah Goldberg, wrote a post he entitled “The Obama Discount,” and printed this email:When are people going to start talking about the REAL reason the markets are down – Obama up in polls. If I was McCain, I’d start telling people, “If you want to lose more money, vote Obama.”
Though Jonah said he had “no idea whatsoever if there’s merit to this, and if there is how much merit,” he nonetheless noted that he was receiving “lots of email like this”—presumably from other geniuses who write emails sharing their economic theories with Jonah Goldberg.
Our man at USNEWS, who features prominently in the original Goldberg Theorem post by Greenwald, does not follow this firm rule, and then goes on to state why he thinks the market may be tanking, and surprisingly enough, it is still the impending Obamocracy that is causing the crash. Not, as you might think, the fact that the economy is a total disaster:
Dismal corporate earnings and poor economic data around the world were the immediate causes for the sell-off, analysts said.“There’s a lot of panic out there today,” Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York, told The Associated Press. “People have been saying that we’re in a recession. This is the realization.”
Stock markets around the world are troubled by worries over looming economic disruption following the financial market meltdown.
Investors are concerned that a radical slowdown will harm companies’ profitability more than previously feared, concerns that appeared to be borne out as a string of companies issued worse-than-expected results.
***In the futures markets in the United States, the stocks of auto makers like Ford and General Motors suffered after Toyota reported sales declines, suggesting a worse environment for all car makers. In Germany, Daimler’s stock dropped 11.4 percent after it reported lower third-quarter earnings.
In Japan, shares of Sony fell more than 14 percent after it cut its earnings forecast. Apple stock was hit after Samsung reported a steep profit decline, suggesting a more difficult climate in consumer electronics.
Adding to the pressure on markets, large hedge funds and other institutional investors have been withdrawing their money en masse to try to reduce risk and raise cash as stocks have declined — moves that have only intensified the selling.
Strangely missing from that NY Times report is any wild speculation about fears caused by an impending Obama administration, and instead, it seems to rely on facts and actual market factors. It must be that famous liberal media bias again.
Now granted, I understand that emotion does play a role on the market- see irrational exuberance, but the notion that fear of an Obama Presidency is what is driving the events of the day is first class wankery. Warren Buffet has endorsed Obama. Ben Bernanke just seemingly endorsed the Obama/Democratic stimulus package. I don’t know how much money Jay Nordlinger and Andy McCarthy and Jonah Goldberg have in the market, but if crackpots like that are what is driving the market, we are in far worse trouble than anyone could have imagined.
Maybe Pethokoukis should just mark all incoming e-mail from the NRO and the Weekly Standard as spam?
Powered by FireStats
Tymannosourus
“If you want to lose more money, vote Obama.”
How do you not have a post as a major campaign strategist, Goldberg?
4tehlulz
>>How do you not have a post as a major campaign strategist, Goldberg?
Exactly; he can’t be any worse than Steve Schmidt or Bob Shrum.
Conservatively Liberal
Iwish the wingnuts would get together and decide who to blame. Ihave heard it is the fault of poor blacks and other minorities who robbed the banks with the help of the Democrats, this morning a woman on Washington Journal was blaming Carter and Clinton, and there are numerous other wingnut cranks out there spewing their nonsense.
How about this: The financial institutions of our country ripped people off to line their own pockets, and they did it knowing that they were courting disaster. Now that it is here, they want the taxpayers to bail them out, essentially saying ‘if we go down, we are taking a lot of other people down with us’.
Extortion, high finance style. Nobody has been found at fault, nobody is being held accountable for this and the longer it goes that way the more cockeyed the conspiracies the right will cook up to blame the left for the problems. There are criminals in this but nobody wants to touch them because they are rich pricks who give lots of money to politicians (on both sides). They have paid for their protection, and every one of them who are exposed and convicted means more politicians will have to hand back donations to cover their asses.
I want to see some frog marching, and I sure as hell hope it starts up after Obama wins. These last eight years are going to be known as the time criminals took over our government and trashed not only our nation but other parts of the world, all in the name of the God they worship, Money.
Joshua Norton
Funny that. People who know, like Donald Trump, say the market does better when Dems are in office. The public knows the regulations will be enforced. Repubs just want to give their high-rolling buds a chance to steal everything that isn’t nailed down.
Greenspan as much as admitted that yesterday.
libarbarian
No.
It really is all about Obama.
And cute pictures of furry pets.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
"If you want to lose more money, vote Obama."
"If you want more black criminals roaming the streets, vote Dukakis."
"If you want more communists, vote Humphrey."
Forty years of Republican thought since Goldwater.
Who said the Conservative Movement was dead?
(Actually, I think it was the Goldwater family).
dobrojutro
I seem to recall McPalin being up in the polls UNTIL the economic crisis hit 4th gear. It’s exactly the reverse of the Obama discount: sinking economy made Obama presidency more likely.
MattF
MSM isn’t going away, but there are just lots more viewpoints available. Enough so that there’s a qualitative difference in the public discussion. One of the Bad Things that happened—maybe 15 or so years ago—was a contraction of the ways in which people’s opinions freely faced one another. But those days are gone, gone, gone—and that’s a good thing.
‘Disgusted Conservative’, ‘Deranged Wingnut’, ‘Actual Leftist’ are all categories that you still won’t hear from on, say, the Lehrer show—but they’re all over the place in-real-life.
Napoleon
I know that many may not consider Josh Marshell is not a Citizen Journalist but TPM has without a doubt changed how the Bush administration as well as this campaign has been covered. He single handedly pushed into the dialog stuff like the Attorney General firing scandal, the Social Security privatization bambozzlement, etc.
Nylund
I actually just attended a seminar by a financial planning company who were trying to win over a group of very rich folk with a very fancy dinner, lots of free GOOD wine, music, speakers, etc. The main point of the evening was obviously to convince the rich folk to hand over their money to these financial planners. These were the types that have a few million sitting around that they don’t know what to do with, not the $100 million types, but, in my mind (Unlike John McCain’s), still quite rich.
The financial advisers had some pretty big name guests with them (finance talking head types you’d recognize from cable news) who were trying their best to scare the rich folk with the higher tax rates Obama was going to charge them. Telling them that it was in their own best interest to vote McCain to keep their wealth in their pocket. I saw a few old rich ladies gasp when the tax rates were mentioned. You’d think they were just diagnosed with a terminal disease. These rich investors were indeed thinking quite seriously about how Obama’s plans would affect their money (ie, sell stocks soon before the capital gains rates go up, etc.) BUT, after a few minutes of these people talking about the choice of president solely in terms of taxes on the rich, these rich people, the ones who were going to see their own taxes go up, started demanding to know from the financial advisers why they should vote for a party that tortures people, that starts wars, that shreds the constitution, etc.!
They sounded more like Berkely Hippies than some of the most wealthy, and financially prudent people in America. Their overall sentiment was, "who gives a damn about higher taxes when there is so much more than that riding on this election?"
Point being, from my experience, you definitely do have finance people out there making decisions today based on the likelihood of an Obama victory (which would include selling things now before taxes going up) but I think there are a lot of very rich people (like Buffett) who realize there are a lot of things more important in life than what you pay in taxes.
Bulworth
A "regulatory reign of terror".
Damn. I am so all about a regulatory reign of terror.
Cris v.3.1
"Citizen journalism" was always an overblown fantasy—at least if you take the word "journalism" literally. The majority of political blogging is commentary, not reporting. That’s the nature of the medium: barriers to publication are reduced to nearly zero, so publishing an opinion or a reaction to a published piece is very easy. But the remainder of the barriers to journalistic reporting (available staff, access to primary sources) didn’t change with the advent of online publishing.
So if you were expecting the web to produce thousands of intrepid reporters, researching and publishing stories that the newspapers didn’t report, you were doomed to disappointment from the start. The fact that even a handful of new sources (such as TPM) emerged strikes me as pretty impressive.
Personally, I think that if you take "citizen journalism" to include commentary (as Ben Smith and Josh Levy seem to), the blogosphere has been a smashing success. I love the plethora of thoughtful opinion pieces on the web, and I appreciate the informality (and occasional vulgarity) of many of them.
Throwin' Stones
@Joshua Norton:
I posted this earlier, downstairs and O/T:
Greenspan: no one could have anticipated
TS
John from Concord
Unfortunately, my job involves watching the global markets closely. People—funds, mostly—are selling stocks, commodities, and most currencies, everywhere in the world, and buying yen, dollars, and dollar-denominated bonds. Does that sound like the world’s investors are afraid of Obama—or like they see him as one of their last best hopes in a time of deep crisis?
Stupid ill-informed wingnuts. Team Red is supposed to be GOOD at this market stuff. Sheesh.
SnarkyShark
Or you can just go read Naked Capitalism for the full blown nightmare.
I take consolation from the fact that I have nothing, therefore I have nothing to lose.
But I’m pretty fucking far from all right.
Comrade Stuck
Well, that would require some serious mirror time, and it a well known Universal truth that Wingnuts cannot be seen in mirrors.
Cris v.3.1
@SnarkyShark:
You’re invisible now; you’ve got no secrets to conceal. How does it feel?
JGabriel
John Cole:
But at least he’s not a Republican.
.
Comrade Nixon Hailfire Palin
John, John, you just don’t understand. Everything is either:
1. Bill Clinton’s fault, or
2. Barack Obama’s fault (despite having not even won the election yet).
Conservatism cannot fail; it can only be failed!
Martin
Citizen journalism works great. The problem is that it gets lost in the noise. Last year, GOS ran 20 or so diaries in series on the CA wildfires and did a far better job documenting what was going on, where, and when than the networks. Some of the information came from local networks, but GOS could aggregate it better than they could. It works well for instant reporting where you have a large enough base of support to bring more information together than other organizations. Not so good for in-depth reporting.
Similarly we’ve seen an increase in non-corporate journalism, like TPM and ProPublica simply because their reach and cost of publication through the web and podcasts has significantly lowered the barrier of entry to bring new players to the market. These outfits are focusing on in-depth reporting that the news outfits can’t seem to make a case for because the issue can’t be presented in 90 seconds on the news, and isn’t big enough to get onto a news magazine like 60 Minutes. I expect to see a lot more of these over time.
It’ll take some time for all of these players to settle into clearer positions in the market, but I expect that’ll happen.
cyntax
I really don’t see the relevance of citizen journalism as being measured by whether it replaces the MSM or not. I know that the MSM keeps obsessing over the idea that citizen journalists are trying to supplant them but that just seems backwards.
Instead if we look at how TPM managed to push the story of the politicalization of the Justice Department into the MSM, that to me seems to be the model for success citizen journalism should be measured against. Another example would be ThinkProgress’ and their fact-checking work. It’s more of symbiotic relationship in which citizen-journalists can highlight stories and concerns that are not being addressed by the MSM, eventually pushing these alternate narratives forward and getting the MSM to cover them.
Quaker in a Basement
I think Yogi Berra once said, "Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded."
Does it not occur to these people that the public that’s about to elect Mr. Obama is the same public that is worried about our country’s economic future?
Tsulagi
So basically you have Goldberg and Pethokoukis postulating “It would irresponsible not to speculate on thoughts in my head” theories, and the NYT using facts and figures. That pretty much sums up the current right/left approach.
Besides the social aspects, believe Buffet has also said he would gladly support higher taxes on himself to rebuild and advance infrastructure, particularly technological, and education as they would be good for the long-term growth of his companies. His wealth would grow. What a weird concept.
Remember when Schartzenegger to great self-fanfare announced Buffet as his economic adviser when first running for governor? He was serious about fixing CA budget problems. But he quietly dumped Buffet when he said if you can’t or won’t reduce spending, then you should look at raising taxes as borrowing to spend only grows the problem. Heresy!
Deranged dirty fucking hippie. Every economics-savvy Republican like our Decider knows you’re at your wealthiest when your credit cards are maxed out and you’re continually going for higher limits. There’s always someone who’ll give you more money. Right?
demimondian
The major effect of citizen journalism has been the emergence of a counter-narrative to the efficient command and control narrative that sprang from the right. The left is fond of whining about how we’re shut out of discourse, and, truly, until recently, that was a fair gripe.
The problem, though, wasn’t that Tweety was a closet authoritarian, or that Tom Brokaw is a hard-core McCain supporter—the former being probably false and the latter, true—but rather that there was a vacuum in the commentary media. A part of the job of the mass media is to reflect what they hear, and what they were hearing was a steady, noisy right-of-center chorus.
Citizen journalism has created a steady, noisy chorus across the entire political spectrum. More speech has crushed the advantage of the right in being heard.
Far Left American Hater Incertus
The stock market does better during Democratic administrations than Republican ones—this is a provable fact. My guess is that it happens that way because Republicans manage to put the economy in the shitter just before they leave office, and thus the Democrats have more fertile ground to grow in. It’s like burning a field before you plant in it.
binzinerator
We may be like rolling stones now, but we do have a direction home.
Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » But I Thought It Was Obamaphobia That Was Moving the Markets
[...] Continuing from below, more refutation of the Pethokoukis “Goldberg Theorem”: [...]
cyntax
Agreed. And there’s a kind of feed-back loop in which intelligent push-back by our side helps enable counter-narratives by people like Olberman and Maddow. Even though KO is really more centrist on most things, but even then he still comes across as a counter-narrative in comparrison to much of the MSM that’s been subjected to the Overton Window effect of the right over the last twenty years or so.