{"id":3965,"date":"2009-01-12T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3965"},"modified":"2009-01-11T17:55:16","modified_gmt":"2009-01-11T22:55:16","slug":"would-you-like-a-little-optimism-with-your-coffee-this-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3965","title":{"rendered":"Would You Like a Little Optimism with Your Coffee This Morning?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama has made it clear you\u00a0won’t get it from\u00a0the President.<\/p>\n

First off, as a refresher, there are leading economic indicators and\u00a0there are lagging economic indicators.<\/p>\n

The stock market is a leading economic indicator in that to the degree investors have the data and the visibility, the market tracks the forseable future, barring any unforseen events such as natural disasters, wars or terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

The 21 percent rally<\/a> in the Standard & Poor\u2019s 500 Index since Nov. 20 reflects speculation the worst of the recession is over, according to Biggs, managing partner at hedge fund Traxis Partners LLC, and Doll, chief investment officer for BlackRock Inc. Equities will probably keep rising, they said yesterday on Bloomberg Television.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometime around the middle of the year there\u2019s going to be pretty conclusive evidence that the economy has stabilized,\u201d Biggs said. \u201cThat\u2019s what the stock market is now looking forward and seeing, and that\u2019s why I think that this rally carries further.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Employment on the other hand, is a lagging indictor. Unemployment usually confirms what we already know, or at least suspect. The fact that we are hearing news of job losses is, at least from a macro standpoint, good news, as long as we are all resigned to the fact that we are in fact in a recession. Job losses usually mark the beginning of the end.<\/p>\n

Context is everything.\u00a0By no means is 7.2% unemployment severe in the context of past recessions. It’s been much higher in modern times, and around 5 1\/2% of that is “built in” – represents the unemployable<\/em>.<\/p>\n

My advice is to\u00a0reject media analysis of the economy, including – I mean especially – Barack Obama. His understanding of basic economics is\u00a0impaired.<\/p>\n

the president elect warned<\/a> that failure to pass legislation enacting his proposals within the next few weeks risks letting the U.S. fall into a deeper and more prolonged recession.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…his understanding of politics and fear however is quite well developed, which makes him motivated. And dangerous.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama has made it clear you\u00a0won’t get it from\u00a0the President. First off, as a refresher, there are leading economic indicators and\u00a0there are lagging economic indicators. The stock market is a leading economic indicator in that to the degree investors have the data and the visibility, the market tracks the forseable future, barring any unforseen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,64,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-president-obama","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}