The S&P Says We're Better Now Than 4 Years Ago

     This was one reason I really didn't want the obscenity of a President Mitt Romney-ok there were lots of reasons, like not wanting to see the end of Medicare or see Latinos forced to "self deport."

     However, it was so obvious even during Romney's one bright spot during the campaign-the first debate in Denver- where he claimed the middle class has been "crushed" that the economy was actually improving.

    Could you imagine having to listen to Romney's preening while taking credit for a recovery which the President himself had a significant hand in achieving? How much do you think he'd be preening right now after headlines like this?

     "The Standard & Poor's closed above 1,500 for the first time since the start of the Great Recession in 2007, lifted by strong earnings from Procter & Gamble and Starbucks."

     "The S&P 500 closed at 1,502, up eight points, or half a percent. It was the eighth straight gain, the longest winning streak since November 2004."

    "The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 13,825, up 46 points. The Nasdaq gained 19 points to 3,149."

     http://bigstory.ap.org/article/sp-500-longest-winning-streak-2004

     Yeah, not as quickly as we hoped. Still can we have some perspective? I mean it could be a lot worse: we could be Europe. There's a real irony that while conservatives warn about the spectre of galloping inflation. a "debt bomb" and us becoming Greece, we're actually have a far healthier country today than anyone in the EU where they love austerity.

    What's great is not only are we not Greece or becoming Greece, nor are we becoming Britain which under David Cameron has put into practice many of the policies that Mitt Romney ran on. Why are we a healing, healthier economy while Britain and the EU have seen a double dip? One reason is that we didn't have full blown austerity here-we did see some in the form of cutbacks at the state level; it's a shame that state policy has been so procyclical.

    However, Obama steered us away from the deep austerity that the GOP was pushing for in 2011 and the Very Serious People have been clamoring for.

    Overall, with each passing day we see more and more headlines where some other economic metric is at it's best metric since 2008 or 2007-most recently we saw the moving average of unemployment claims fall to 330,000 a week the best in 5 years and clearly showing expansion.