George Bush was sworn in on Saturday, January 20, 2001. On that day the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 10,587.59 (based on the previous day close).
On September 29, 2008 -- that'd be yesterday -- the market closed at 10,365.45.
That is a seven year eight month record of -222.14, so if you decided to put money in a stock fund that tracks the DJIA on the day George Bush took office you would have lost money over his term.
I can't think of a more stark, numeric, clear denunciation of the Bush stewardship of our economy or the entire right wing regulatory and financial ideology.
Bush has had some issues that hurt the economy, but most of them were of his own making. He hung out in Crawford, Texas after being told bin Laden was determined to strike America. He chose to invade Iraq with no exit plan and a pretty poor invasion plan based on rosy expectations and mythic "realities".
But to the large extent this is his problem. Bush is the one who pushed for homeownership and stock ownership, chatting blithely about the "ownership society" which he encouraged by reducing the regulation on loaning parties, encouraging people to buy more than they could afford, watching happily while people took equity out of their homes, and generally sniggered that he was responsible for the dramatic increase in home ownership.
But those homes were tied to bad mortgages, and those bad mortgages were what fueled any economic growth we enjoyed over the past few years. People spent their home equity after their shrinking paychecks couldn't cover the basics, much less the luxuries the right wing pushed on us all.
Remember "Defeat the terrorists, go shopping today!" They demanded we follow our patriotic duty to spend, spend, spend!
But at the same time our paychecks were not keeping pace with inflation, so we borrowed, borrowed, borrowed at the insistence of the Bushies.
The result is the mortgage crisis that is collapsing a real estate bubble and taking down our entire financial house.
And now the DJIA is lower than when Bush took office.
He's the worst President ever.