Don’t worry; be happy
Sing along: Good news, nothing but good news, nothing but good news all day long.
At least from the U.S. economy today.
A quick list of why U.S. investors were in such a good mood today. Such a good mood that the Standard & Poor’s 500 climbed 1.7%.
Initial claims for unemployment dropped unexpectedly. Claims fell by 20,000 to 268,000 for the week that ended on February 26. Economists were looking for an increase in new claims to 395,000, according to a survey by Bloomberg. (We get the jobs report tomorrow and economists are expecting to see that the economy added 200,000 jobs for February.)
The U.S. service sector matched the strong growth reported last week for the manufacturing sector. The Institute for Supply Management’s index for non-manufacturing businesses rose to 59.7 in February from 59.4 in January. That’s the highest level since August 2005. Economists had been looking for a drop to 59.3.
U.S. retailers posted a larger than expected gain of 4.3% in same store sales for February. That was well above the 3.8% gain projected by analysts and it marked the 18th straight monthly gain in same store sales.
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It’s too soon to say for certain, but it looks like the temporary rise in the dollar which began in early November may be over. As I posted a month ago, I would be watching the dollar relative to the euro to help decide when to pick up some of the emerging market stocks I’ve been watching (such as IBN).
Now may be the time to begin dollar-cost-averaging back into emerging market equities.
The federal government maxed out OUR credit card for the year and bought another state of the art flat screen TV!!! Isn’t that great? Lets not think about how next week the TV will already be out of date, but the credit card debt will still be hanging over us years from now.
The government bought a lot of new bureaucrat jobs (a flat screen would have been more productive) plus they continued two wars — and they conn’ed the bank into giving us another $1.5 credit limit. The Fed is keeping rates artificially low — aka stealing from pensioners and savers… and this got us a 0.2% drop in official unemployment (well, that plus we stopped counting a lot of unemployed people)
The official plan for the future is to take out at least ten more credit cards for $1.5 trillion each — and max those cards out too. Some future leadership will hopefully make the tough decisions of how to balance spending and pay back our debts.
This is trailer trash economics 101 — except the trailer is parked at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
ogreggy, how’d you get access to a computer in prison? does your warden know?
Great analysis southof8.
ogreddy – Amen. Bring it, preacher.