News/Commentary

Wall St. realizes worst year since 2008 after Biden boasts of stock market performance on his watch

January 1, 2023 | | Print Article

At the start of 2022, President Joe Biden touted the performance of the stock market. Yet one year later, the market has since recorded some of its worst losses in history.

Flash back to Jan. 7th, 2022. Speaking from the White House State Dining Room that afternoon, the president proudly bragged about the stock market.

“[T]he stock market — the last guy’s measure of everything — is about 20 percent higher than it was when my predecessor was there. It has hit record after record after record on my watch, while making things more equitable for working-class people,” he said.

Listen:

If only …

“The Dow, Nasdaq, S&P, all ending the year lower than where they started, and making it the worst year for the market since 2008,” NBC News’ Peter Alexander reported this Saturday, i.e., the last day of 2022.

Listen:

Alexander wasn’t kidding.

Take the S&P 500, as just one example.

“After dropping 0.3% on the final trading session of the year Friday, the S&P 500 finished 2022 down 19.4%. It’s the seventh worst year for the index on records stretching back to 1929, according to FactSet data,” Axios reported Friday.

“That means 2022 ranks with the ugliest years of the Great Depression, the 2008 financial crisis and the dot com bust in the annals of market massacres,” the outlet added.

(Source: Axios)

The Nasdaq dropped even more precipitously, while the Dow meanwhile sustained the smallest losses.

“All three of the major averages suffered their worst year since 2008 and snapped a three-year win streak. The Dow fared the best of the indexes in 2022, down about 8.8%. The S&P 500 sank 19.4%, and is more than 20% below its record high, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 33.1%,” according to NBC News.

Nice try, though, Mr. President.

Naturally, as a consequence of the market tanking this year, 401(k)s sustained pretty noticeable losses.

“The average 401(k) balance sank for the third consecutive quarter and is now down 23% from a year ago to $97,200, according to a new report by Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest provider of 401(k) plans. The financial services firm handles more than 35 million retirement accounts in total,” CNBC reported in November.

Similarly, “[t]he average individual retirement account balance also plunged 25% year-over-year to $101,900 in the third quarter of 2022.”

Dovetailing back to the president’s Jan. 7th remarks, he also patted himself on the back for creating jobs, reducing unemployment, and raising wages.

“At the same time, we’ve created jobs, reduced unemployment, raised wages. As I’ve always said: When working people do well, everybody benefits. I’m determined to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out because, when we do, we get more growth, higher wages, more jobs, and over time, lower prices,” he said.

There’s just one or two problems.

While it’s true wages are up on a raw number basis, their REAL (inflation-adjusted) wages have actually dropped, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“Despite the stronger wage growth due to the tightness of the labor market, a majority of workers are finding their wages falling even further behind inflation. For workers who experienced a decline in their real wage in second quarter 2022, the median decline was 8.6 percent,” the bank reported in October.

“While the past 25 years have witnessed episodes that show either a greater incidence or larger magnitude of real wage declines, the current time period is unparalleled in terms of the challenge employed workers face,” according to the bank.

Also, the president didn’t really reduce unemployment. What he did, conservatives argue, is sit back and watch as lockdown polices ended and millions of Americans returned to work. Even PolitiFact has conceded this point.

“Biden inherited an economy that was beginning to recover from the coronavirus pandemic and with vaccinations about to roll out for millions of Americans,” the usually dubious “fact-checker” reported in September.

“With more people vaccinated and able to move about more freely, more money was being spent. That increased demand and the need for workers. And with vaccinations available, more went back to work. In short, how you do as president depends a lot on where you start,” PolitiFact added.

Exactly …

Republished with permission from American Wire News Service

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Vivek Saxena
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