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Investing

Deficit Fight Worries Investors–Gallup

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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What keeps investors up at night as the NASDAQ moves above 3,000 for the first time since December 2000 and other indices press toward new highs. Fights between the two political parties and the way that undermines clear government policy is the primary concern, according to Gallup.

A new poll shows that

American investors are most likely to say a politically divided federal government (73%) is hurting the U.S. investment climate “a lot,” according to a Wells Fargo/Gallup Investor and Retirement Optimism Index survey. The federal budget deficit (66%) and the unemployment rate (62%) are also among the issues investors are most likely to say are hurting the U.S. investment climate. Investors are least likely to list the availability of credit as a problem from the eight items tested.

The results are unexpected because issues like unemployment are so immediately obvious and close at hand. But, investors can apparently think in the abstract and imagine a election year in which nothing is done about taxes and will eventually cause the market’s concern about these matters will undermine the confidence of the entire financial system.

Methodology: The Wells Fargo/Gallup Investor and Retirement Optimism Index results are based on questions asked Feb. 3-12, 2012, on the Gallup Daily tracking survey of a random sample of 1,022 U.S. adults having investable assets of $10,000 or more.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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