A Watched Pot

Via FOIA, Judicial Watch recently obtained a raft of Treasury Department documents related to the October 13, 2008 meeting with Wall Street CEOs. I'll try to get into more of this. But for now, here's an early morning email from Treasury official Jim Wilkinson to Ed Gillespie, Joel Kaplan, Keith Hennessey, Dana Perino, and Tony Fratto:


Wilkinson's interest in the Dow futures is telling. Even as a trader on one of the Street's busiest desks, I don't remember ever hearing the Dow futures mentioned. If you ask any Wall Streeter where the futures are trading before the market opens, he/she will assume you mean the S&P futures. But as a political player keenly aware of the nation's most important psychological barometer a few weeks before a presidential election, Wilkinson was focused on the Dow.

The Dow barometer became a political priority during the late nineties, when the stock market became a national raison d'etre instead of a passive reflection of underlying business conditions. After a decade of the media, public, and policymakers reacting to every tick, the market was right back where it started. Funny how that works.