WHILE HE'D INHERIT A STRONG BUT SEEMINGLY WEAK ECONOMY, AS BILL CLINTON DID...:

An Obama surge on Wall Street, and beyond? (Tom Petruno, November 4, 2008, LA Times)

The stock market today bucked convention with a sharp advance that lifted the Dow Jones industrials 305.45 points, or 3.3%, to 9,625.28.

That extended the Dow’s recovery from its 5 1/2-year closing low reached on Oct. 27 to 1,450 points, or 17.7%.

Since stocks began trading on presidential election days in 1984 (before that, those days were market holidays) share prices have mostly moved little while awaiting the outcome. The average move in either direction has been less than 0.5%.

This time around, for whatever reason, some investors were in a buying mood for all sorts of assets they wouldn’t touch during the October meltdown -- including domestic stocks, foreign stocks (European blue-chip shares jumped 4.1%, on average) and commodities (oil futures soared $6.62 to $70.53 a barrel).

...Defense is a far smaller portion of GDP, so he'd have to cut it t 1% to reap the huge peace dividend that Mr. Clinton got credit for. He should cut that much but probably doesn't have the credibility to do so.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2008 7:28 PM