Quote from nwbprop:
Could you please give your reasoning as to why Bush being in office leads to less volatility for the overall market. Just curious. thanks.
It is a two stepper type answer.
Volatility compression occurs in the market in response to a set of economic pressures. We have achieved that at this point.
The Bush aspect of it is a clear causal factor. This is the first administration since OMB was set up by the most precision oriented President to sit in modern times to operate as this one does. There are two major ways to administer the government.
This administration is unique in the approach it uses.
Google "Brandeis reports" to get the "normal" modern way. This is a form of high class problem solving using an "honest broker" to iteratively refine the solution.
Google "idealogue" to get the way it is done now. Bush is handled by a crew which is politically oriented (Cheney, Rove, Hughes, Rice, Card). They put in place an idealogue in NEC (Lindsay). The idealogue and the political crew were wrong. On the outside were the skilled Brandeis types (DiIulio, O'Neil, Greenspan). They failed to prevail with "trigger" oriented self policing approach. They wanted to stop any idealogue approach if it should be stopped if it did not work with set triggers.
The killer economic events that were not stopped were: tax cuts, deficits, and war. Worse, now we have SS, medicare, and states not getting support for the foreseeable future.
As the spiral down is not checked with triggers, people quit who could solve the poblems. Greenspan has not continued the informal Brandeis effort that was done up to O'Neil's departure.
The compression in volatility you see clearly and trade around is not going to go away until pragmatic problem solving replaces the planning by ideals of individuals who have turned out to be incorrect. This is not going to be possible with the handlers Bush is subject to.
The compression started seriously when the summer quarter ended.
I have worked this mileux for both republican and democratic administrations of 4 four Presidents. What is going on now is unbelievable to a lot of retired past EOP staffers.