The Midterms: America's Bad Bet

Yesterday, many folks of the good ole U.S. of A. placed their money on the Republican party. Whether the bet was a good or bad one remains to be seen. But if recent history prevails, it looks like voters just flushed away a whole lot of duckets.

As Timothy Egan writes in the Times, "The presidency of George W. Bush produced the worst stock maket decline of any president in history" [the DOW dropped 22 percent under GW's watch], but if you invested $100,000 strictly in the NASDAQ average on Nov. 2, 2008, you would now (two years later) have $177,000. And if you invested $100,000 over the same period just in the Standard & Poors 500, you would now have $148,000. That's a 77 percent and 48 percent return, respectively.

Not too $habby.