Marketplace: News Archives

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

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It's Wednesday, the 13th of December. I'm David Brancaccio.

That glow from Austin, Texas appears to be the dawn of the George W. Bush presidency. With the time for recounting just about gone following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of Bush last night, Al Gore and running mate Joe Lieberman are expected to go on TV tonight and withdraw from the election. The Texas governor will make a public address an hour later. While even the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court couldn't all agree on what do about the Florida vote, there does seem to be a growing consensus that U.S. elections need an overhaul. Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports from Washington.

Dimsdale: "Congress has already been bombarded with bills to bring about a better way of voting. One bipartisan proposal asks the Federal Election commission to study the last election, consider the state of the art technology and recommend changes by the end of next year. Local election officials will no doubt move quickly away from those pesky punch ballots with chads open to speculation over their pregnancy. But the alternative machinery can be expensive. Then there's a question of the electoral college ... which for the first time this century will apparently prevent the man with the plurality of the national vote from winning the White House. Electoral college critics say it undermines faith in the system by valuing the votes in swing states over votes in non-battleground states. But the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, Curtis Gans, says the electoral college forces presidential candidates to travel to less populated states to deal with regional issues."

Gans: "If you move to direct election system, you'd have a national media campaign, conducted on the lowest common denominator of whatever the pollsters said about the national interests. You'd have candidates going to the most populous areas. You'd have no incentive to taking into account group interests or mobilizing people in any particular way. And if you had to do a national recount, that would be a disaster."

Dimsdale: "Gans recommends federal standards for recounting ballots to keep the outcome out of the hands of the courts and the politicians.

In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace."

After five weeks of uncertainty, President George W. Bush was supposed to be exactly what Wall Street's been looking for. Yet today's market reaction was less than exuberant, with the Dow gaining two tenths percent, which is...eh. The Nasdaq Composite fell 109 points or 3.7 percent. Marketplace's Michelle Brier explains the thinking...

Blitzer: "Maybe this is the ultimate politcal case of buy on the rumors, sell on the news."

Brier: "David Blitzer is chief investment strategist at Standard and Poors."

Blitzer: "This market spent the last four weeks becoming a bush market and now that we are there we are getting a fizzle."

Brier: "The market's lackluster response could be the result of election fatigue - investors are just tired of hearing about chads and butterfly ballots and have already factored in a bush victory. But there's also a recognition that more fundamental problems face the markets, says ted weisberg, president of seaport securities... "

Weisberg: "You know, we are right back to a slowing economy and how that affects corporate earnings. We are at the end of our calendar year and december historically is a funny month because you get a lot of tax selling."

Brier: "there are other unknowns making investors edgy. Retail sales were unexpectedly weaker last month - down four tenths of a percent. No one is sure whether the holiday season will manage to pull retailers back into the red. And the federal reserve, which is believed to be leaning toward an interest rate cut to ease the economic slowdown, is unlikely to make a move until early next year. Finally, while it appears clear that george w bush has won the white house, David Blitzer says there's still some political uncertainty…"

Blitzer: "After all, in normal years, we'd already know who the cabinet members are gona be at theis point. We still only have rumors that change daily."

Brier: "And as Wall Street joins the rest of the nation in watching what is expected to be a final concession speech from Vice President Gore tonight, Ted Weisberg reminds us not to bank on anything in this unusal election year..."

Weisberg: "It aint over 'til it's over."