Obama Is Good for the S&P 500

Since its creation 84 years ago, Standard & Poor’s has only doubled under four presidents. Barack Obama has just added his name to the list. This month, the index has more than doubled since the election of the 44th president in 2008. On Friday, May 24, 52 months after Obama’s inauguration, the well-known index climbed 105 percent, or 18 percent per year.

Of course, Obama was helped by the financial market collapse in 2008. The S&P 500 started from such a low point that it was relatively easy to regain any lost ground.

Despite a stock market collapse, prompted by statements from Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the U.S., with Barack Obama, has done better than the nine other world economic powers. Of these nine economies, ranked by size, only India has come close to America’s performance. Like China and Brazil, India reached its peak in 2011 and then experienced a more anemic economy.

If one compares all of the world markets, they have only improved two-thirds as much as the U.S. market has.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt died, the S&P index improved 141 percent. But FDR had been in office longer than Obama has. The actual improvement of the index was only 7.5 percent per year, or less than half of the annual gains during Obama’s presidency.

The other presidents who have been good for S&P include Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, but none have come close to the yearly increase of the S&P 500. Clinton had the best score, with 15.2 percent.

This good sign doesn’t mean as much for Barack Obama as it does for Wall Street. During the last presidential campaign, the financial world, which accuses Obama of conducting socialist politics, spent more than $500 million to drive him out of the White House, with little success.