Pssst! Barack Obama is Killing Your 401(k)

If you’re like most people with a workplace 401(k), you likely have your savings spread out in a handful of different funds, in what you hope is a strategy to minimize risk while maximizing returns.  No doubt, however, that at least one of these funds contains many of the stocks counted among the S&P 500.  Most plans even have a S&P 500 “mirror” fund, which holds the entire portfolio of stocks in the register, and whose value will move up and down accordingly with the index.

And again, if you are like most people with a workplace 401(k), you likely do not check it very often -  perhaps quarterly, when your statements come out, if that.  So I’m going to help out today, and give you an idea of how the S&P 500 has been faring under the Obama Administration.

See, the S&P has been doing a study since 1957 (but only releasing the information since 1971) of their performance during a third year of a presidency, under the assumption, no doubt, that by this point the true effects of a chief executive’s policies are reverberating through the economy.  So with that in mind, let’s look at this chart, taking us from Richard Milhous Nixon to Barack Hussein Obama:



Yeah, that’s just over 1% growth.  With the president having turned the Treasury into a printing press, that’s not even keeping pace with the rise in inflation.  Think a gallon of gas is only 1.9% more than it was during the Bush administration?  Been to the supermarket lately?

That 1.9% “gain” is actually a loss, and a fairly big one, as not only has your money not been working for you, it can’t even buy what it might have three years ago. And whatever growth it might make next year, it will be less - it will always be less – than it should have been, because of the failure to add any principle to your original investment made back in 2008. Compare that to the results of the half-dozen presidents prior to Barack Obama, and you’ll see the magnitude of his failure.

Thinking of voting of Obama and the Democrats again in 2012?  Makes sense, if you are sure you can hold on to your job until about your 90th birthday…