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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (5122)	1/19/2009 11:33:32 AM
From: pompsander	1 Recommendation Respond to of 103300

Obama: Highest Initial Approval For Elected President? Barack Obama's favorability ratings have continued to improve as we approach Tuesday's inauguration. But how do they compare to those of his predecessors? The two highest initial, post-inauguration approval ratings as measured by Gallup belong to presidents who took over for others whose terms ended prematurely. About 86 percent of Americans approved of Harry Truman when he took over for FDR. And 77 percent approved Lyndon Johnson when he took over for JFK. The highest initial approval rating for a newly elected president, on the other hand, appears to belong to Kennedy, whom Gallup pegged at 72 percent approval shortly after his inauguration in 1961. Barack Obama has an excellent chance to exceed Kennedy's numbers. The Pollster.com averages show that 70 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama versus 16 percent unfavorable. Although favorability ratings aren't the same thing as approval ratings, they tend to closely track one another. Also, it appears that there may typically be something of a bounce in an incoming president's approval scores immediately after his inauguration, so Obama's numbers may (temporarily) get even better. My guess is that when Gallup comes out with its first post-inauguration approval ratings for Obama later this week, it will show him with about 76 percent approval, 11 percent disapproval and 13 percent uncertain, which would indeed be the best numbers on record for a newly-elected president. At the very least, Obama is virtually assured of starting out on better footing than his two immediate predecessors in the White House, as Bill Clinton had emerged victorious in a three-way race in which he got just 43 percent of the popular vote, and George W. Bush's disputed victory in 2000 had come only after weeks of uncertainty and litigation. fivethirtyeight.com

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (5122)	1/19/2009 11:37:04 AM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

More Madoffs? My colleague Eamon Javers emails over an addendum to his January 11th story warning to expect more Bernard Madoff-type financial scandals, and presenting some of his own research to show some of the hedge funds across the country that have produced results experts say are suspicious on their face. He emails: Only three days later, a money manager who runs two of the funds identified as suspicious in our research vanished, allegedly taking with him hundreds of millions of dollars of his investors’ money. The Sarasota Herald Tribune reports that law enforcement authorities are still searching for 75-year old Arthur G. Nadel. “Nadel reportedly has not been seen since Wednesday, the day before other fund managers admitted to customers that their money, totaling some $350 million, was gone,” the paper noted. Two of the funds apparently managed by Nadel, Valhalla Investment Partners LP and Viking LLC, were highlighted in the Politico survey of funds that had produced 20 quarters of positive results. Our research followed up on one of the main red flags in the Madoff case: that he never reported a down quarter. With the natural ups and downs of market trading, investigators say it’s nearly impossible to have continuous success. According to research done for Politico by Morningstar Inc., there were 1,684 hedge funds that have disclosed their results for the past 20 consecutive quarters. Of those, Morningstar found that 34 have never reported a down quarter in the past five years. And of those 34, at least seven funds, or their parent firms, are in some way connected to the Madoff scandal as investors in Madoff’s operation. That left 27 firms that have a five-year track record of gains and no known connection to Madoff. With the disappearance of Arthur Nadel, our list is now down to 25 funds with suspiciously positive earnings results. Stay tuned. politico.com _____________________ Pomp edit: financial reregulation will be the easiest task the new administration will have. The danger is, of course, they kill the goose in plucking it......