little more
Take President Bush's corporate responsibility speech on July 9, with which his advisors said he "hoped to hearten traders and investors with harsh plans to crack down on corporate fraud -- and perhaps spark a rally," according to the Washington Post. When the market declined later that day and the next, it was therefore widely framed as a reaction to -- or a verdict on -- the speech. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., went so far as to say on CNN's "Crossfire" that if Bush had asked for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt, "the market would have gone up instead of down. As the marketplace looked today at the reforms that were being proposed by the president, they didn't see enough teeth in them, and as a result, the market plummeted again."
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