How Can Fox Stand it?

The historical record is clear: the stock market does best under Democratic administrations. How can Fox stand it?


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November 11, 2009, 9:25 pm
The agony of Fox Business
James Wolcott is made of sterner stuff than I am: he actually has the fortitude to watch Fox Business, where the talking heads manage to find nothing but clouds in the silver lining of a huge stock rally. To make their point they bring on such market experts as … John Bolton. As Wolcott writes, “It takes more than a market rally to pull the wool over Bolton’s mustache.” (Now that’s writing!)

But seriously, sort of, there’s a broader moral to be drawn from this.

Clearly, the Fox Business crew is having a very hard time. They bill themselves as being truly pro-business — not like those leftists at CNBC. But they aren’t really pro-business; they’re pro-Republican. They’d like you to believe that it’s the same thing; but there’s this awkward fact that markets have, you know, gone up under Obama.

And this isn’t just a phenomenon of the last few months. Look back at stock returns under recent presidents, which is easy using a clever gadget at Political Calculations. Taking real, dividend-inclusive annual returns on the S&P 500, I get:

Reagan: 10.08%
Bush I: 10.16%
Clinton: 14.35%
Bush II: minus 5.81%

Tax-hiking Democrats are supposed to be terrible for business; I mean, Norman Podhoretz whines that Jews should be conservatives because Republican policies are better for the economy. But the data just refuse to say that — and that’s even if we restrict ourselves to the stock market, never mind job creation, wages, poverty and all that.

So the whole idea of Fox Business is problematic. It’s Fox, which means that it’s basically an arm of the GOP; but that’s a terrible match for business coverage, because the economy just refuses to punish liberals and reward conservatives the way it’s supposed to.

I gather that Fox Biz has managed to push up its morning ratings by hiring that great financial guru Don Imus. But that sort of proves the point; Fox Business can get viewers, but only by turning itself into … Fox News.