One would imagine they can only play the ‘better than expected’ game for just so long before it becomes obvious (and for most of us, it is already too late) that they can set any of the indexes wherever they want them. The top one percent owns more than 90 % of all the stock (and the top one percent of those people own 80% of that!)
In a bankrupt world, the markets can reflect anything they want except the truth…no amount of ‘plumage’ can disguise the badly broken, predatory commerce system that smashed into the solid rock ceiling at over a thousand miles an hour.
Writing ‘Dow 50,000’ doesn’t make it true just as today’s Dow at 9,000 has no basis in reality. It’s a meaningless number without the corresponding commercial activity to support it! You know this and I know this…the problem seems to be they ‘think’ we’re fooled, that we believe the numbers they post, that we don’t know why they post them…but they post those numbers to hide how much they’ve stolen…’looted’, from our society…
In what is becoming a familiar ‘pattern’, the market marched up only to sell off as the day wore on…let’s take a look at tonight’s offering for the contradictory ‘justification’ spewed by the MSM…while we once again feel pity for a guy who must be pretty hard up for a job to keep writing this tripe…
After Heartening Reports, Shares Rise
By JACK HEALY
Published: October 8, 2009
The economy is still a long way from healthy, but on Thursday, a constellation of signals on job losses, company profits and retail sales gave Wall Street a little more reason for optimism.
First-time unemployment claims fell by 33,000 last week to their lowest levels since early January, brightening hopes about employment. The aluminum maker Alcoa turned a profit over the summer after a year of losses. Mortgage rates fell, making it easier for borrowers to afford a home. And retailers posted their strongest sales of the year. [Um, perhaps the MSM isn’t paying attention because last week the BLS ‘adjusted’ the job loss figures UP a million! So instead of losing seven million jobs, we’ve lost eight million…such wonderful news…or maybe the NY Times didn’t get that memo.]
Taken together, the reports provided some evidence that the economy was still on a gradual route to recovery and eased some worries that flared last week amid a flurry of worsening economic figures. [Or perhaps Mr. Healy is unaware of the BLS’s revelation…OR he’s hoping most of you didn’t catch it…]
“This is a good day,” said Stu Schweitzer, global markets strategist at JPMorgan Private Bank. “People who pulled back out of fear are starting to spend more. And we are seeing the evidence now. This confirms that the improvement is likely continuing.” [Hmmn…funny thing about ‘private banks’ and ‘minimum deposit requirements’, if you aren’t a multi-millionaire then you don’t have an account at a ‘private bank’…so what does this have to do with the ‘real’ economy? Should we find it comforting that the people who don’t work are pleased with the progress that’s being made?]
Many are expecting a long, plodding recovery hampered by high unemployment and plenty of residual worry, but the figures suggested that the economy was nonetheless heading higher after a drastic contraction. [The stock market has no relationship to the ‘real economy’ so rising share prices tell us precisely nothing except how much we are being ripped off!]
And the president of the Richmond Federal Reserve, Jeffrey M. Lacker, who is a voting member of the Fed policy-making board, told reporters Thursday that the risk of a double-dip recession had dwindled. [And you can take that to the bank because these idiots have been on top of this whole mess right from the beginning…not that any of them can agree on when that actually was…]
On Wall Street, investors rushed to buy energy producers, retailers and basic-materials companies whose businesses would boom as business picks up. [gee, I wonder what’s going to happen in a couple of months that would make investors drive up energy prices right before winter sets in and buy retailers in the two month window before Christmas…not that anybody has any money mind you…I’m giving everybody on my list rocks for Christmas, lots of rocks…so they won’t run out.]
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 61.29 points, or 0.63 percent, to 9,786.87, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 7.90 points, or 0.75 percent, higher, at 1,065.48. The Nasdaq was up 13.60 points, or 0.64 percent, higher at 2,123.93.
In the energy market, crude oil rose $2.12 to settle at $71.69 a barrel in New York trading, and gold continued to race higher, closing at a record $1,056 an ounce. The dollar fell for another day, to its lowest levels of the year, as investors continued to bet that the American currency would lose its luster as the global economy healed. [What a bunch of ‘patriots’ those investors are, eh?]
The three major equity exchanges in Europe — London, Paris and Frankfurt — all ended the day about 1 percent higher.
“We’re up eight months in a row now,” said Bruce A. Bittles, chief investment strategist at Robert W. Baird & Company. [Who?]“We’re looking to see if optimism gets excessive, especially after news developments like today.” [Gold hitting a new high is a ‘good thing’ how exactly?]
On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that first-time jobless claims fell to a seasonally adjusted 521,000 last week, and that continuing claims for unemployment aid fell by 72,000 to 6 million for the week ending Sept. 26. [Um, since there has been no new extension of benefits, people who exhausted their claims, all 72,000 of them, are now both jobless and penniless…right before winter and just weeks before Christmas.]
Few economists expect the job market to snap back after nearly two years of relentless layoffs and firings, but the numbers hint that October could be better than last month. Job losses accelerated in September, dashing hopes that businesses would do any substantial hiring before the end of the year. [Weirdly, retailers have cut back on hiring Holiday Help this year…while delivery companies are advertising for extra help, not that they’ll need it in the largely credit card driven home delivery sector…]
Retailers said sales had improved in September as families went back-to-school shopping, and were 0.6 percent higher than a year ago, when the economy was collapsing.
Although retail sales are still dreary by historic standards and are likely to be flat during the holiday season, the numbers offered some evidence that consumers were spending at least a little. Consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of the economy, has edged up over the last four months, and is expected to grow in the third quarter. [Um, not for nothing but I’m sure most have noticed how energy prices have been creeping up steadily since they dropped mightily just before the elections…coke sackers!]
Interest rates were higher. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note fell 18/32, to 103 5/32, and the yield rose to 3.25 percent from 3.18 percent late Wednesday. [I still can’t find any info on how much Australia raised their rates…but I’m going to guess it wasn’t much because nobody else has followed suit.]
What a ‘wonderful day’! The markets are up and the dollar is down…I’ll bet investors are just so excited about how ‘competitive’ this is going to make (largely non-existent) US exports.
As I’ve said before, there is no ‘co-relation’ between wealth and intelligence…as evidenced by the most recent crisis (which none of them saw coming!)
This particular, um, ‘shortcoming’ isn’t a desirable trait one likes to observe in their leaders…not that we actually have any of those hanging around. This doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination make stupidity a desirable trait in our decision-makers either!
One would hope that a wide space separates the mentally challenged from the levers of power…but sadly, this isn’t always the case…a problem made that much more difficult to cope with by inherited wealth.
If we were to examine our ‘failed’ commerce system for its weakest link…dissolving the link between wealth and intelligence would be a good place to start.
As we can see from today’s offering, too much wealth addles the brains.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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