A year and a half after winning their majority, the Tories' affects on the stock market have been less than stellar.
Just after the 2011 election, the pundits were crowing about how much the markets loved the Tory majority. Stephen Harper himself boasted about how well the markets reacted to the Tories' approval of the Nexen takeover a mere three weeks ago. But, that reaction was apparently weak and short-lived. Over the past year, the Toronto Stock Exchange has been one of the worst-performing stock markets in the world, trailing the DJIA, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, the Hang Seng, and the Nikkei. Even most European markets outperformed the TSX's anemic 4% growth.
The picture looks even worse, the further back you go. On June 2, 2011, the first day of the Tories' majority, the TSX stood at 13519. It closed out 2012 down over 1000 points from that mark at 12433; a loss of more than 8%. In that same time period, the DJIA has grown by nearly 7%. Under Obama's "socialist" rule, American businesses have thrived, and the American markets have grown accordingly. Whereas, here in Canada, the business-friendly Tories have been granted complete control of the government and the recession has long since ended, but average Canadians have seen their retirement portfolios do nothing but shrink.
Even today, long after the program ended, the Tories' commercials tout their Economic Action Plan and its promise of "Jobs, Growth and Prosperity." Despite all evidence to the contrary, it's not actually a lie: Negative growth is a kind of growth too.
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