Friends
The President gave a rousing speech last night. Unfortunately, the reality is that the markets don’t seem to believe much will get done. To put it mildly, the President was slightly vague on how he was going to pay for the initiatives he was touting, which, by the way, sounded a lot like the last stimulus program (some $800 billion that did not seem to do anything but put us more in debt). We have been saying for some time now, and it seems like now to be stating the obvious, that jobs are the key to improving sentiment and long term economic growth. Without job creation, we are just spinning our wheels. Everyone knows what the problem is (seems like it only took a couple of years to get there), but the solutions put forward by the President last night do not seem likely to have any chance of passing. Now, we can hope that there is common ground in there that both sides can get to work on, and come up with something that can pass. But as they say, we’ll see.
In other news, Fed Chairman Bernanke did not give any new indications yesterday about more Fed easing which was evidently disappointing to some traders (you know our opinion is that they have done enough), and overnight Japan revised downward their second quarter GDP. After a quiet down day yesterday, futures indicate that stocks will be weak at the opening.
We’ll see how the trading day unfolds and will update you after the close.
Have a nice day everyone.
