Statistics - picking the Goalposts

Bill O'Reilly is really funny sometimes. I usually don't say much about politics other than when my sense of math is offended which is now.

Since President Obama took office, the Dow is down nearly 1,200 points. In February alone, stocks fell 12 percent. It is obvious Wall Street is not yet confident the president knows what he's doing.

Um. Billy? You do realize that picking the goalposts like that is just going to make you look silly? I'm going to have to point out that under GWB the Dow went from 13000 to 9000 last year before the election (-30%) and then dropped a couple thousand more after the election but before the Hated One took office.

Frankly, if all we'd had to worry about in the last year was a drop of 1200 in the Dow, we'd be cheering in the streets. Below is the Dow for the last year.

Of course, if we go back five years you could equally easily claim that GWB created a huge bubble in the economy and then deliberately and spitefully destroyed it and the country both just when a peaceful transfer of power was taking place, all to express his party's petulance over the results of a democratic election.

That is, of course, if you actually ascribe total power over the economy to the President and his policies. Which I don't.

This is like the man with a rifle. Hit the bull - I'm a good shot. Miss the target - check the sights and bitch about the quality of ammunition these days.

O'Reilly feels that if the Dow goes up, it's the result of pure dumb luck on the President's part and a renewed message about the value of capitalism. If the economy tanks again, then it's all the Democrats fault and they should be taken out and shot.

I feel that the banks should have been allowed to go bankrupt and the car companies should be allowed to close. I don't give a damn about insurance companies who are "too big to fail."