Dow Soars on GOP Win in US; Obama to Face Republican Congress
NINA DOS SANTOS, HOST: Good evening, I'm Nina Dos Santos, live from CNN London, and you're watching QUEST MEANS BUSINESS. Tonight, Wall Street is celebrating a new Republican Congress in Washington. The GOP wins -- win in Washington marks a major shift in the US government's balance of power, and as you can see, what we've seen is the business community very much cheering this new event, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring to an all-time high on Wednesday. And as you can see by the close of trade, we can already see that that market is up six-tenths of one percent, hitting another high. I should also point out that the S&P 500 also closed at a new record for itself as well. Even some disappointing manufacturing data from ISM Index wasn't enough to take the shine off of that victory for the Republican Party in Washington. Let's see what it means for the business community. Alison Kosik joins us now, live at CNN New York. So, Alison, everybody's expecting this to be good for business. Is it?</s>ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, that really remains to be seen. The way investors see it, Nina, is President Obama is not good for business. So, with the Republicans taking the balance of power in the Senate and picking up more seats in the US House of Representatives, the thinking is that we could see more laws pass in favor of business. What kinds of laws? Maybe overhauling the corporate tax code. Maybe deciding on the Keystone Pipeline. These are controversial measures, though, and nobody really believes that they definitely will pass, there's no guarantee. But the hope is greater than what it was, let's say, two days ago. One trader put it to me this way, saying the power of Washington DC is out of gridlock and into the checks-and-balances scenario of the presidency and Congress, and that's an economic positive. So today, what you saw once the opening bell rang were the bulls charging out on that economic positive of hope that pro-business policies could pass Congress. Nina?</s>DOS SANTOS: All right, Alison Kosik, thanks so much for that, there, running us through the trading today after, of course, those results came through. Well, Barack Obama says that he hears the frustration of voters who handed the Republicans control of the Senate. The president says that he's ready to hear new ideas no matter which side they come from.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If there are ideas that the Republicans have that I have confidence will make things better for ordinary Americans, the fact that a Republican is suggesting it as opposed to a Democrat, that'll be irrelevant to me. I want to just see what works.</s>DOS SANTOS: Well, President Barack Obama will have to work with a Congress where both sides of the House are controlled by his political rivals for the next two years to come. CNN's political analyst John Avlon joins us now, live, with his take on how things have panned out. So, John, as I was just saying before, the business community very much cheering this news to the Republican Party, but let's face it, this is also an indictment of President Barack Obama rather than a big win for the Republicans.</s>JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it's a bit of both. Exit polls showed that there was, yes, anger at the president. But actually, there was even more frustration with Congress. And a low turnout midterm election, voters turn dramatically, in some cases, in the last minute, to the Republican Party. So, it's a very convincing win. It's a different kind of election turnout than you see typically in a presidential campaign. But it offers Washington at least a chance for a reset, for the president's last years of his administration for legacy, and for Republicans to show that they can govern by finding a way to define some policy common ground and working together. And I've got to say, the idea that markets are cheering the Republican takeover for Congress makes sense, but the idea that President Obama is bad for business is absurd. Corporate profits and Wall Street are at all-time highs under this president, even if some of those Wall Street executives like to call him a socialist.</s>DOS SANTOS: That's true. And there's also concerns here that having a lame duck administration or a lame suck president for the final two years of this term isn't necessarily going to be great business for American internationally, is it?</s>AVLON: Well, no. Traditionally, a great deal has been gotten done with divided government. Historically since the second World War, we've seen great accomplishments. Where really things have broken down is with this president and the Tea Party-led Republican Congress. But Mitch McConnell set a very sober tone, talking about opening the Senate, reforming some of the rules, trying to find areas of common ground, and I think the president tried to moderate his remarks as well. I think they're going to proceed with a degree of good faith. But there's sort of that trust-but-verify rule. When Republicans are saying they're going to end gridlock, the president has his own incentives to try to find areas to work, it may be limited to trade, tax simplification, infrastructure investment, comparatively modest items. But they're important. But the kind of grand bargains that were achieved in the past with divided government over US history, from the Marshall Plan on down, those seem probably a bit too much to hope for, even at a time when we'll choose hope over recent experience. What's this going to mean, John, internationally speaking? Because often in times like this, what we've seen is presidents undertaking big foreign policy initiatives.</s>AVLON: Sure. Well, the old adage that partisanship ought to stop at the water's edge applies to foreign policy, and it's largely a domain of the president. And the president's actions with regards to, say, confronting ISIS, are things that may be done too little too late, to the eyes of many folks on the Republican side of the aisle and the Foreign Affairs Committee, but there's some overlap. What really is interesting about the current state of American foreign policy debate is you've got sort of a non-interventionist crowd on both the far right and the far left that's very skeptical of American engagement in the world after a decade of war. But the president of the United States, in the way that the office changes the man more than the man changes its office, this president really has come to recognize the necessity of engaging ISIS, of trying a strategy that at the very least containment, but with military strikes. And that terrorism is a clear and present danger, not just to the United States, but to global stability. So, that's an area where there could be bipartisan agreement, at least among leadership, establishment Republicans and this president.</s>DOS SANTOS: All right, John Avlon, thanks so much for that, there, joining us live, there, the --</s>AVLON: Thank you.</s>DOS SANTOS: -- editor in chief of "The Daily Beast" and also CNN's political analyst, too. Now, tracking Ebola via text, how IBM and the government of Sierra Leone are following the spread of the virus. Do stay with us. QUEST MEANS BUSINESS will be back after this.