http://www.cnbc.com/id/46219513 VIX dropping like a rock, employment and economic indicators are showing signs of repair after 8 years of destructive economic policies under the prior administration. Anyhow typically 8 years of poor management takes 16 years to recover from. We got 4 years in but we are in for a long slog. SPY looks to crack 136 by expiration friday this month.
I don't know how sustainable the figure are. I can't see it staying this good for much longer and the figures are possibly fudged.
There is a fundamental problem that no one yet has a workable solution for. Though manufacturing in the U.S. is more productive than ever, the low skill manufacturing jobs that have been lost are never coming back. What to do with this middle-aged, formerly productive, but now unproductive, low-skilled labor force? Do we need a 21st Century WPA?
How the hell does a market rally 50% when a socialist is elected?? And what happened to all that doom of hyperinflation?? And why do facts and reality have a liberal bias??
I'm afraid some of them are... First, presidents get way too much credit/blame for the economy than they deserve. Even our own version of Pravda understands this: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/16/141762700/can-a-president-really-fix-a-bad-economy If anything, everyone should wait a few years after Obama leaves office to evaluate his policies. Second, Obama took over just a month or so before a long-term cyclical low in stocks. And the real impetus for the rally was a mark-to-market accounting change, not some new handout program or gov't spending spree. In fact, Obama's "spendulous" was an abject failure by his own metrics. He warned that the unemployment rate could reach 8.5% if he didn't get his way. Well, he got his way, and unemployment moved over that level for almost 3 years anyway. Third, I saw lots of bumper stickers about how "gas prices were $X.XX when George Bush came into office." Why aren't there ones now bemoaning the fact that gas was $1.80-something when B. Hussein took charge? Finally, no one should predict when hyperinflation (or stagflation, high inflation, a deflationary depression, etc.) will occur. In the Weimar Republic, they did all kinds of things to cause inflation, but it took a number of years for it to take off. And when it did, it happened almost overnight and was unstoppable and exponential. The bottom line is that we're not living in a healthy economy by any means. We hit new highs in the unsustainable 2000 tech bubble and in 2007...does anyone want to take credit for that now? Likewise, stocks ran up in Weimar and Zimbabwe. It means nothing for the long-term.