Stocks Have “End of Summers” Celebration Sending Dow Near All-Time High
Source: Yahoo Finance
Call it an end of Summers celebration. Stocks surged early this morning on the news that Larry Summers withdrew himself from consideration for the job as Federal Reserve Chairman. Summers sent a letter last night to President Obama saying his nomination for Fed Chair would create too many troubles for the administration and the nation. Vice Chair Janet Yellen now emerges as the sole frontrunner to replace Ben Bernanke at the end of his term. The Dow moved within 1% of its all-time high and the S&P 500 once again topped 1,700, before paring some gains late in the session. The Nasdaq closed slightly negative.
Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/hot-stock-minute/stocks-end-summers-celebration-sending-dow-near-time-195921821.html
srican69
(1,426 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)I would have thought Wall Street would have preferred him?
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,142 posts)There was this constant media buzz about President Clinton during his time in office. "He's a brilliant politician". He actually set up the crash and help to outsource American jobs along with deregulating the media.
Now I'm wondering if all the bad press about Summers was a set-up because he would have cracked down on Wall Street and they knew it.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)I must admit that I expected Wall Street to take a dive on the good news the way it often surges on bad news, like a rise in unemployment.
Let's remember that the outcry about Summers came from people like me on the political port side, not exactly allies of Wall Street tycoons in normal times and thinking of them as traitors in times like this. There is certainly nothing in Summers' past to indicate he would have cracked down on fraud. Summers is more like the crooked sheriff coming to Dodge City. Well, he's not coming to Dodge City.
I don't know what explains today's market surge.
pampango
(24,692 posts)who it expected. "
The CNBC September Fed Survey, conducted Thursday and Friday, found Wall Street participants by a 2-to-1 margin believed President Barack Obama would nominate former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to be the next Fed Chairman. But by about a 5-to-1 margin, they wanted current Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen to accede to the top post over Summers.
http://t.nbcnews.com/business/if-its-yellen-wall-street-gets-fed-chief-it-wanted-8C11166978
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,142 posts)I'm anxious to see what Warren says about this. I hope she wasn't played as well.
I recall seeing Summers interviewed by Charlie Rose about 6 months ago. It struck me then that he'd be tough on Wall Street. But he's such a perceived jerk and arrogant, that he made himself a target for everyone.
http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60185807
elleng
(131,091 posts)Liberal_Stalwart71
(20,450 posts)that DU hated; he was supposed to be Wall Street's Puppet--their best friend. If that's the case, why are they celebrating?
Hmmm...
Methinks the DU ODSers don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Paulie
(8,462 posts)The sharks care about the fish but if a bottom trawler pulls up the Summers then it (the market) will take whatever it can get.
Lasher
(27,636 posts)It puts its money where the money is.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,142 posts)isn't it time to react? To let them know and raise serious questions about transparency?
From the notorious The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/16/janet-yellen-fed-chair-larry-summers
creeksneakers2
(7,476 posts)called Summers and even Obama tools of Wall Street must have been wrong. There was no plot by the media.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,142 posts)The media right now is mainly all hawkish on Syria.
NoOneMan
(4,795 posts)So....I'm just saying....you might want to take your profits like the savvy guys and not be standing in the cold holding your wang on Thursday.
starroute
(12,977 posts)The short version is that Summers was considered more likely to pull back prematurely on anti-recession policies, and the market didn't like that.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/summers-the-shiftless/?_r=0
A few months ago Christy Romer gave an excellent talk on the prospects for monetary policy in a liquidity trap, titled It Takes A Regime Shift (pdf). As many of us have noted, the central bank has very little direct traction when safe short-term rates are at the zero lower bound; maybe it can achieve something by buying lots of unconventional assets (quantitative easing), but its main hope of achieving anything is through expectations management convincing both financial markets and players in the real economy that it will hold off much longer on tightening once the economy improves than they currently expect, which will lead to higher expected inflation and demand, and hence higher spending now.
However, engineering such a change in expectations what I long ago dubbed a credible promise to be irresponsible is hard. How do you convince people that the central bank wont just revert to type, always eager to snatch away the punchbowl, at the first signs of economic improvement?
Romers answer is that it takes a regime shift a set of actions that reflect a clear break with the past. FDR achieved such a regime shift in the 1930s by going off the gold standard, and in general by bringing in a, well, New Deal. Shinzo Abe may (the returns arent in yet) be achieving something similar simply by talking and acting in such a seemingly un-Japanese way; I suspect that Abenomics is working better than one might have expected precisely because Abe seemed to be such an ordinary Japanese machine politician, until he started moving on economic policy.
This, I think, is the way to read todays report by Binyamin Applebaum on how the rising odds of a Summers appointment to the Fed is already having a chilling effect on the economy. A Yellen appointment would clearly have represented something new at the Fed not just because she is, as Garrison Keillor used to say, a person of gender, but also because she has been a strong and consistent monetary dove, and took that position before it was fashionable.