Stock Market

The Sept. 1 article by Ronald Brownstein about the market’s potential negative effect on President Clinton was filled with irony. It is, of course, unfair to blame Clinton for the recent downturn in the market, since he had nothing to do with it and is unlikely to have any impact on the market in the near term. The irony is that he also had nothing to do with the long run-up in the market, for which he takes credit, and upon which much of his popularity is based.

The economy started its improvement in the year before Clinton’s election and continued to do so in his shaky first two years, when a Democratic Congress thwarted his many attempts at foolhardy policy. The economy accelerated its rise after the 1994 Republican sweep into Congress. The balanced budget, also for which Clinton takes credit, was forced on him by an opposition Congress as part of the “Contract With America.” The true heroes of the American economy are Alan Greenspan and the blind luck of problems elsewhere in the world.

There would be some justice if Clinton were finally rejected by the public over an issue which he cannot control, since that same issue raised his popularity to a point where he has been immune to more realistic criticism.

PHILIP MARSHALL

Playa del Rey

* Is there now irrational negativism in Wall Street?

M. EDMUND ELLION

Santa Ynez

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* Isn’t it fascinating that, at a time when 25% of our children are living in poverty, tens of thousands of workers are having their economic lives destroyed by downsizing and mergers, bankruptcies and home foreclosures are at an all-time high, 40 million of our citizens cannot get adequate health care, our streets are filled with homeless people and our young people are told that it is almost certain that they will not do as well as their parents, Robert J. Samuelson (“Americans Are Taking a Dive With the Rest of the World,” Commentary, Sept. 1) tells us that in the richest nation in the world, “things can’t get better.”

One can only wonder what Samuelson thinks bad times will be like.

SANFORD THIER

Los Angeles

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* There are smart people who want to protect our Social Security funds for the next 30 years by putting them in the stock market. But they don’t even know what the market will do the next day.

These are the same smart people who, not long ago, wished that we could be more like the “Asian tigers”--the tigers that are now in a meltdown mode.

EUGENE KUSMIAK

Fallbrook