Despite an early morning sell off to start the week, a late rally managed to support the major indexes, which eked out a small gain for the day. A gain is a gain, and it’s amazing to me how much resistance the market has shown.
Helping yesterday’s cause was a bullish report on new home sales, with the sales rate suggesting that this area has bottomed. Of course, these numbers were so bad in the past that now anything “less bad” is cheered as a turnaround in the making. To me, housing in general has a long way to go, before it can be called a recovery of some sort.
Fed chief Bernanke staged his first town hall meeting this past weekend and was quoted as saying:
“The silver lining in this whole thing is that people are starting to save more, since they saw what happened with 401k investments,” Bernanke said. “People are adopting good habits, so not only will we back on track, but the economy will be stronger than it had been before this started.”
While saving more is indeed part of the solution, I fail to see the previously spread logic via stimulus packages to get the consumer spending like he did in the past. Is the Fed now singing a different tune or just trying to appease the public?
Go figure.
Comments 7
Hi,
Anything a politician says or does has alterior motives in my opinion, based on my 60+ years listening and watching these characters. Everyone knows they are only looking out for their greedy selves and their buddies.
Call me naive but I fail to understand the logic behind looking at everything and seeing something sinister.
I don't think people of the stature of Mr Bernanke or President Obama would put their interest before their nation's.
I think they are genuinely trying to solve problems, just that they could be misguided on certain issues or the problems we are facing are too big to solve within the time frame that we expect them to solve.
Ulli,
Maybe Mr. Bernanke is worried about keeping his job and just said what the people and his superior want to hear and maybe just maybe he will keep his job if he keeps talking like he has been whether he is right or wrong. Just some more #@$%%#$@. from the government.
I.B.
ulli,
VR you have a big lesson to learn about politics and someday your eyes will be opened to reality. There is nothing magical about Mr. Obama or Mr. Bernanke, just plain run of the mill politics.
VR
Call me naive but I fail to understand your logic behind not looking at everything political and seeing something sinister.
Ulli,
Isn't it quite a conincidence that Bernanke a few weeks ago was all gloom and doom, but now all of a sudden changes course and is preaching recovery, imagine that.
This spin about a Real Estate recovery is just that spin. Anyone who knows Real Estate knows that May kicks of the peak season for home sales.
The Federal Governments attempt to artificially support housing prices will eventually back fire.