The week that was!

Now that 2008 Presidential election is over, all kinds of aftermath, all kins of postmortem have been written by all kinds of pundits. I think the best is the one by the U.K. Reuters today:

NEW YORK, Nov 7 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks broke out of theirpost-election funk on Friday, but on balance, the market hardlydelivered a ringing endorsement of Barack Obama's defeat of John
McCain to be elected 44th president of the United States.

Whatever the reason, since Election Day, major U.S. indexes are down more than 7 percent. For the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI and Standard & Poor's 500 .SPX, that represents the worst ever conclusion to the week of a presidential election.

Here's the table shows the percentage, since 1896, rise or decline in the major indexes in the last three days of the week after the winner is determined:

Year   Dow    S&P    Nasdaq  President elect
2008  -7.08  -7.43   -7.46   Barack Obama
2004  +3.51  +3.15   +2.73   George W. Bush
2000  -3.19  -4.60  -11.32   No decision: G.W. Bush v Al Gore*
1996  +2.28  +2.34   +2.31   William Clinton
1992  -0.38  -0.56   +2.02   William Clinton
1988  -2.84  -2.63   -1.34   George H. W. Bush
1984  -2.02  -1.65   -0.42   Ronald Reagan
1980  -0.51  +0.11   +0.19   Ronald Reagan
1976  -2.38  -2.21   -1.02   James Carter
1972  +1.06  -0.22   -0.34   Richard Nixon
1968  +1.35  +0.82    ---    Richard Nixon
1964  +0.16  +0.06    ---    Lyndon Johnson
1960  +1.84  +1.38    ---    John Kennedy
1956  -2.02  -2.65    ---    Dwight Eisenhower
1952  +1.20  +0.73    ---    Dwight Eisenhower
1948  -6.00  -7.16    ---    Harry Truman
1944  +0.11  +0.31    ---    Franklin Roosevelt
1940  +1.06  +0.81    ---    Franklin Roosevelt
1936  +2.79  +1.40    ---    Franklin Roosevelt
1932  +5.34  +8.02    ---    Franklin Roosevelt
1928  +2.13  +1.99    ---    Herbert Hoover
1924  +0.93   ---     ---    Calvin Coolidge
1920  -2.34   ---     ---    Warren Harding
1916  +0.41   ---     ---    Woodrow Wilson
1912  +1.13   ---     ---    Woodrow Wilson
1908  +5.28   ---     ---    William Taft
1904  +2.75   ---     ---    Theodore Roosevelt
1900  +7.03   ---     ---    William McKinley
1896  +5.86   ---     ---    William McKinley

American people have made the decision for this election. For better or worse, it's 1456 days until the next presidential election.


Update:

Here's Michael Ramirez's editorial Cartoon for the Investors Business Daily on November 3, 2008:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
-- Abraham Lincoln (1808 - 1865),
16th President of the U.S.