The election of Barack Obama as the next U.S. president creates plenty of profit plays for investors in the New Year. By Martin Hutchinson Contributing Editor Money Morning/The Money Map Report With his landslide election victory Tuesday - coupled with Democratic gains in the House of Representatives and in the Senate - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will have the ability to pursue more or less any policy he wants. For investors who have been trying to analyze the economic outlook for the New Year, the election of U.S. Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) provides a major piece of the forward-looking jigsaw puzzle that these analysts hope to assemble. That’s because the likely trends of the United States and other economies around the world - and the relative success of different sectors within those economies - depends crucially on who’s in the White House, what policies they have, and ...

When US stocks dived following the passing of the bailout bill, President Bush sought to calm investors. He said it would "take a while" for the bill to take effect. Problem is George W doesn't have much of time.

In less than one month, Americans will vote into office either Barack Obama or John McCain. Each has very different ideas about how to tackle the financial crisis.

Martin Hutchinson says Obama is most likely to win on a populist anti-Wall Street platform. But if he follows up this rhetoric with more regulation and protectionism, this could hurt US investors even more in the long run.

The market’s verdict on the $700 billion bailout was pretty clear: Stock prices started dropping the moment the bill was passed on Friday afternoon and continued to do so Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 370 points for the day – after being down 800 points earlier that same day. The economic effect is also pretty clear: Given that the bailout plan is being launched at a point when money is already tight – and that it pours $700 billion of our money into the most useless, toxic waste left over from the housing bubble – you can be certain that it will end up starving more-worthwhile potential investments of badly needed capital. But the political impact is less clear, in both the short- and long-term periods. For a start, it’s not clear to the electorate who is to blame ...

Over the last eight years, we have watched in horror as a two-term Republican Administration furthered programs that have effectively thrown lit sticks of dynamite into our American factories. Continue reading