KILLING THE AGENDA TO SAVE THE PRESIDENCY:

Obama Agenda Tanks, Stock Market Soars (Fred Dardick, August 1, 2009, Canada Free Press)

From their lows in March 2009, all 3 major indices have dramatically risen: the Dow is up from 6,547 to over 9,100, the NASDAQ Composite Index rose from 1268 to just under 2000 and the S&P 500 is up 200 points to 988. [...]

Although the cap and trade energy tax has yet to be voted on in the Senate, it has already become the persona non grata of the administration. Apparently regulating the gas we exhale is starting to sound ridiculous to majority of Americans, especially since global temperatures have actually been decreasing over the past 10 years - thus the new fashionable term “climate change” as opposed to “global warming.”

The only mention of energy related legislation on the White House website over the past couple of weeks is a notice that Energy Secretary Steven Chu was establishing a Facebook group to personally promote green policies to American youth - hardball politics indeed! Apparently even the administration is giving up on this fools battle.

Obama healthcare reform legislation is likewise looking like a lost cause: it’s way too expensive, it’s a huge political risk for centrist Democrats who don’t want to get voted out of office in the next election (there are, after all, lots of perks for being in Congress), and no one in their right mind wants to be enrolled in the public option which is looking more and more like “euthanasia for seniors” with each passing day.

Speaking to an investor with over 30 years of experience, all he felt was needed to confirm that healthcare reform was going nowhere in Congress was to look at the current stock prices of health insurance companies. Obama’s desire for complete government takeover of the healthcare industry would inevitably cause these stocks to drop like a rock. After all, who would want to own stock in a business that was destined to be priced out of existence?

It turns out the 2 largest health insurance companies have been doing quite well lately, especially since Obama’s uninspiring prime-time healthcare news conference last week, which even commentators on MSNBC described the President as “sleep walking” and “defeated”. WellPoint is now trading at $52, just $1 less than its 52 week high and up 5% since the healthcare news conference; UnitedHealth Group is at $28 a share, up 10% since the healthcare news conference and only $5 off its 52 week high.

The smart money is betting that private health insurance is here to stay.

Sure, the failure of Democratic dreams is tough on the true believers, but it's good for the American economy and, therefore, good for the UR, which is all he cares about.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2009 8:17 AM