Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 15,056, an all-time record. For one conservative group, this can only mean one thing: it’s time to impeach President Obama.

That was the message Capitol Hill Daily, a conservative publication based out of Baltimore, sent to Citizen United’s listserv today. They accused President Obama of “wreck[ing] the stock market” and asked readers to take a poll about whether he should be impeached as a result.

From the email:

Dear Concerned Reader,

Fearing the very worst, the nation’s super-rich are unloading their stocks at an alarming rate.

Even more troubling, the wealthiest 1% of Americans, who typically know the most, are the ones most anxious to sell.

You see, Obama just allowed 13 new tax increases to further slow the economy, wreck the stock market and make it even harder on the 12 million Americans already looking for work.

The bigger question is this…

Is Obama’s Latest Tax Screw Up Grounds For Impeachment?

See a screenshot below:

When Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the Dow Jones was at 7,949. Over the last 4 years, it has gone up approximately 90 percent before reaching a new high today.

It’s important to remember that the health of the stock market is very different from the health of the overall economy. Middle class wages are stagnating and millions are still unemployed or underemployed.

But when a conservative organization claims ignores reality in such a blatant way, one can’t help but quote former Rep. Barney Frank: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”

The Great Recession fueled an explosion in income inequality and the economic recovery has carried on the trend. The numbers themselves are staggering, but the causes are also important. A new report from the Pew Research Center finds that not only did the wealth gap between the bottom and the top of the income ladder expand during the first two years of the recovery, but we can chalk most of it up to the improvement in the stock market during that time:

During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau data. [...]

These wide variances were driven by the fact that the stock and bond market rallied during the 2009 to 2011 period while the housing market remained flat.

Affluent households typically have their assets concentrated in stocks and other financial holdings, while less affluent households typically have their wealth more heavily concentrated in the value of their home.

From the end of the recession in 2009 through 2011 (the last year for which Census Bureau wealth data are available), the 8 million households in the U.S. with a net worth above $836,033 saw their aggregate wealth rise by an estimated $5.6 trillion, while the 111 million households with a net worth at or below that level saw their aggregate wealth decline by an estimated $0.6 trillion.

This astronomical rise in wealth at the top coincides with a frothy stock market. During the same two years, the S&P 500 rose by 34 percent. Meanwhile, home prices kept falling: The S&P/Case-Shiller home price index fell by 5 percent during that time.

The report notes, “The different performance of financial asset and housing markets from 2009 to 2011 explains virtually all of the variances in the trajectories of wealth holdings among affluent and less affluent households during this period.” That’s because the wealthy hold more stocks and bonds and less of their wealth is tied to home price. Households with a net worth above $500,000 have 65 percent of their wealth in financial holdings. Lower income households, on the other hand, have half of their wealth in their home and just a third of comes from the stock market.

This trend isn’t unique to the recession, however. Income inequality has been growing over the past 30 years thanks to skyrocketing executive pay, stagnating pay for workers, the growth in low-wage jobs, and a tax code that often benefits the well off.

During an appearance on CNBC yesterday, Charlie Munger, deputy to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, had some harsh words for high-frequency trading, the practice used by huge financial firms to trade stocks in milliseconds. “Take the rapid trading by the computer geniuses with the computer algorithms,” said Munger. “Those people have all the social utility of a bunch of rats admitted to a granary.”

As a new report from Demos makes clear, high-frequency trading definitely is the equivalent of admitting rats to a granary, as it extracts value for traders but without bolstering investment. The price of that is ultimately paid by consumers:

The increasing inefficiency of the Capital Intermediation process is in part attributable to the trading practices of [high-frequency traders] HFTs, which generate high trading volume and no investment. The cost to the system is generated by several factors. First, the illusion of market liquidity provided by HFT volume leads to the inherent instability of market pricing mechanisms. In addition, aggressive HFT tactics mislead market participants in terms fundamental price. Finally, Dark Pools, trading venues that exist because of HFTs, impair price discovery.

All of these distortions extract value for the HFTs. Investors pay the cost initially because their investments are less valuable in conditions of chronic price distortion. However, investors must compensate for the additional cost that results from the extracted value by adjustment of price. This price adjustment is paid for by the consumers of capital.

High-speed trading now makes up more than half of the stock market’s volume. As this chart from the research firm Nanex shows, high-frequency trading has exploded since 2007, spiking in the aftermath of the Great Recession:

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted yesterday to draft new rules to rein in high-frequency trading. Doing so would both drive investment to productive sectors of the economy while removing dangerous volatility from the market like that which caused 2010′s “flash crash.”

In 1999, James Glassman and economist Kevin Hassett, who eventually both worked for President George W. Bush, famously wrote a book predicting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would go to 36,000 within three to five years. Of course, instead of the Dow going on the rocket ride they predicted, the financial crisis sent it spiraling into oblivion, bottoming out at 6,547 in March of 2009.

But with the Dow having climbed to its record high this week, Glassman is back, writing in Bloomberg View today that “Dow 36,000″ is achievable “quickly,” as long as a slew of conservative policy ideas are embraced:

To get it, we need policy changes that will create a better environment for businesses to increase revenue, profits and jobs: a rational tax system that keeps rates low and eliminates special deductions and credits;…entitlement reform to bring down costs and provide incentives for productive seniors to keep working; sensible environmental, workplace and financial regulation that allows entrepreneurship to thrive; a K-12 education system that boosts student achievement and holds teachers, administrators and politicians accountable …

Chime in and make your own list, because it’s time to focus on what counts in an economy: growth. Even with relatively high risk aversion (let’s say, what we have now), faster growth would significantly increase stock prices.

How fast can the U.S. grow? Four percent is attainable, but I’d settle for 3 percent. Get there quickly, and we’ll get to Dow 36,000 quickly, too.

When asked if he feels “the need to apologize to someone who read your book, went in and got creamed,” Glassman replied, “Absolutely not.” Former Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration economist Bruce Bartlett had, perhaps, the most proper reaction to Glassman’s new prediction: “Nitwit Jim Glassman is again predicting that the Dow will reach 36,000. Time to sell everything?”

Glassman proves, like many before him, that those clinging to the economic ideology of the Bush years feel no need to grapple with the economic catastrophe Bush left in his wake. And of course, the stock market’s recent meteoric rise has had little benefit for workers in the real economy.

Glassman is now the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute.

The Dow Jones reached an all-time high of 14,200 today, besting the pre-financial crisis record set in 2007. The robust gains may surprise many Wall Street analysts and cable news prognosticators who, just a few months ago, were raising the alarm that an Obama reelection would send the market into a tailspin.

During election season, experts warned that Obama’s intent to raise the capital gains, dividend and corporate taxes would hurt investments, while Mitt Romney’s business-friendly attitude would lead to a first day rally. It soon became “conventional wisdom” in the financial sector that the stock market would favor a Romney win, while an Obama second term would be disastrous.

Echoing a Romney campaign talking point, a chief economist at Gluskin Sheff praised Romney on CNBC as “a candidate that could more readily come to a compromise with the opposition” over the fiscal cliff deal, and would be “overall better” for the markets:

Fox Business seized on market gains the day after Romney’s first debate performance as evidence that the stock market was rooting for a Romney win. After Election Day, the network lamented that Obama’s win caused a market dip, which was actually a reaction to bad economic news from Europe and the impending fiscal cliff fight in still-gridlocked Congress:

CNBC market analysts also stoked the panic, hosting a Barclay’s Capital manager who suggested Obama’s reelection would spark a recession like the one in 1948:

Even after the stock market continued to improve after Obama’s re-election, this same “conventional wisdom” prompted many investors to dump stocks at the end of last year, fearing an uptick in the capital gains tax.

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The stock market climbed to new heights today, clearing 14,200 for the first time in its history. The previous high of 14,164 was reached on October 9, 2007, in the days before the financial crisis. In this year alone, the stock market is up 7.8 percent.

But while stocks are achieving new highs, precious little benefit is trickling down to workers. This chart shows workers’ wages as a percentage of the economy, which are hovering near record lows:

As Quartz’s Matt Phillips put it, “in many ways Americans are still sucking wind after the gut punch they suffered in 2008.” In fact, the richest 1 percent of Americans have captured 121 percent of the income gains achieved during the current recovery, meaning everyone else has actually lost ground in terms of income since the economy bottomed out.

High-frequency trading — using computer algorithims to trade stocks by the millisecond — has exploded in recent years. One Democratic Rep. is urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to do something about it, using a law that he authored more than two decades ago:

Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has waged a decades-long struggle against computerized trading sent the SEC a hint: The power to curb high-frequency trading has been within its grasp all along.

In his letter, Markey described a law he co-sponsored in 1989 to increase the agency’s power to regulate computerized trading, a precursor to HFT that employed computer programs to make trading decisions without the participation of conscious humans. The law lets the SEC “limit practices which result in extraordinary levels of volatility,” according to Markey’s citation.

Markey, nudging further, added: “If the commission simply makes a finding that the markets are currently in a period of extraordinary market volatility and that HFT is reasonably certain to engender such levels of volatility, the Commission can immediately promulgate rules that restrict or eliminate the practice.”

This chart from the research firm Nanex illustrates how high-frequency trading has grown since 2007, spiking in the aftermath of the Great Recession:

High-speed trading now makes up more than half of the stock market’s volume. During one week in October, one trader alone made 4 percent of the stock market’s trades. As Reuters’ Felix Salmon noted, “The stock market is clearly more dangerous than it was in 2007, with much greater tail risk; meanwhile, in return for facing that danger, society as a whole has received precious little utility.”

In 2010, the Chicago Federal Reserve warned the SEC about the perils of high-speed trading. If Markey is right, the SEC has had the power to do something about it all along.

After Fox News grudgingly called the election for President Obama early Wednesday morning, Fox Business quickly started hawking the idea that a stock market drop on Wednesday morning was in response to Obama’s victory. Stuart Varney and Ed Butowsky claimed the decline was because “the takers have taken over” and investors are afraid of tax hikes:

VARNEY: Dow Industrial is down 177. That is a sell-off. Is it an Obama sell-off? We’ll discuss. With Obama’s victory, the takers have taken over. The makers are clearly in the minority. Am I right? It’s a sell-off the day after the election, with an Obama second term we’re down 183 points.
[...]

VARNEY: And it’s a reaction to the Obama victory?

BUTOWSKY: I don’t see anything else except what’s going on in Europe as well.

VARNEY: Okay, so stocks down, bonds up and this is largely a reaction to the Obama victory.

BUTOWSKY: Without any question in my mind.

Watch it:

In fact, as the Washington Post explained, the market responded positively to Obama’s reelection early in the day, but soon plunged over concerns of the Republican-controlled Congress playing chicken with the upcoming fiscal cliff and a slew of bad economic news out of Europe. (And, of course, stock moves are rarely attributable to any one event.)

The talking point that Obama is somehow bad for the market emerged in 2008, when Fox and other conservative commentators immediately attempted to ascribe stock market fluctuations to Obama’s victory. Conservatives also pointed to a similar drop off after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, though the market recovered later in the day once the court’s ruling was clarified.

The Dow Jones industrial average has actually gained 67.9 percent since Obama took office.

Thomas Peterffy, who pioneered the computer-based high-frequency trading that generates millions of dollars in profits for big banks, said in an interview with NPR’s Planet Money that speed trading has gotten so fast that it now “has absolutely no social value”:

Peterffy says automation has done some very good things for the world. It’s made buying and selling stocks much much cheaper for everyone.

But Peterffy thinks the race for speed is doing more harm than good now. “We are competing at milliseconds,” he says. “And whether you can shave three milliseconds of an order, has absolutely no social value.”

When Peterffy first began using computers to trade, high-speed trading was rare. Now, as the Huffington Post noted, it makes up more than half of the stock market’s volume. This interactive chart from Nanex, a markets research firm, shows how high-speed trading has exploded:

Tho address this problem, Peterffy told NPR that a regulatory structure that slows down trading is necessary. Though he didn’t mention it specifically, one way to achieve that goal would be a financial transactions tax, a small levy on trades that would slow down markets while barely affecting normal traders. The European Union has considered a transactions tax in the wake of the financial crisis, and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) have proposed one here in the U.S.

That tax could raise $35 billion annually, according to DeFazio, but more importantly it would remove volatility from the markets and make the entire financial system safer. Cries from industry insiders that a transactions tax would hurt economic growth, DeFazio told ThinkProgress earlier this year, are simply false. “For 50 years we had a tax that was about seven times larger than this when the country was seeing the greatest growth in its history, post-World War II,” he said. “So we’ve proven this will not have a detrimental impact on growth. In fact, it perhaps is beneficial to growth. It’s not necessarily beneficial to salaries of hedge fund managers on Wall Street.”