Now that Barack Obama is done demolishing the US fiscal balance, he’s now going to work on demolishing the US stock market. Just a couple days after losing the Massachusetts senate election, the rumblings of the administration wanting to crack down on finance companies is hitting the pipeline, and we are seeing it in the form of rises in implied volatility. Here is a 5-day chart of the S&P 100 30-day implied volatility (otherwise called the VIX):

It will be very, very interesting to see how this gets played out. Volatility is good, as long as you can predict whether markets go volatile “up” or volatile “down”!