Small Fish, Big Pond

Since I have

some investments I’m very happy that the Dow broke 9000 today. It’s an arbitrary number but it’s one I set as a goal in my mind back in February. I was thinking that if the Dow gets to 8000 by summer and 9000 by Christmas we’d be well on our way to recovery. Getting here this fast is a good sign that this won’t be the next Great Depression that so many people said it would be 8 months ago.

The gains in the last week have been almost too rapid that I think we’ll still see days below 8500 in the future. But like I said this is far better than I think anybody could have hoped for at the beginning of this year. Unfortunately the real world we live in feels the fallout longer than the market so even if we jump to 10,000 by Christmas (could you imagine!!) then it will still take a year or so for the real world to stabilize under the highs of Wall Street.

It’s funny that I hear people now saying that with the market at 9000 already that it’s proof that the stimulus bills were unneeded. Um… I think the reason it’s this high already is BECAUSE OF the stimulus bills; this is exactly what they were supposed to do, they just did it better and faster than we thought they would.

Personally I think Obama’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” was much better than Bush’s “T.A.R.P.” handout to the banks; but I think the rapid recovery of the last 6 months proves that not only have they worked, they worked better than the most optimistic of us expected.

Here’s hoping that in the next 6 months Wall Street will stabilize into a realistic 10,000 and companies can rebuild their foundations so we can avoid scares like this in the future (although I believe the market is driven on fear more than anything else but that’s a whole different discussion and I’m running already long).

And I promise this is the last of the financial posts.