"The Obama Premium"

It's been amusing, if increasingly grating, to watch people like James Pethokoukis push the bonecrushingly stupid argument that Obama's rise in the polls is the real reason the markets have been crashing.

John Authers of the FT points out that even if you accept the dubious premise that politics has been driving the markets, Pethokoukis and company are still wrong:

[O]ther global stock markets have suffered worse than the US in the past two months, and funds have flowed to the dollar. This implies, if anything, that the US is benefiting from an “Obama premium”.

Authers also rebuts the argument—currently being pushed by the RSCC—that if the Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress, life as we know it will end (or something like that):

[R]esearch by the CFA Institute shows that stocks do better when one party runs both branches of government.