There has been a three year push to call our economic malaise a "recovery'-- a most tiring and pathetic affair of treating millions of thinking adults as children while millions others are quite content to accept the message of hopeful optimism. And the media really doesn't delve into 'why' things are supposedly getting better.. they just state it as 'fact' and you simply 'accept' it.
But as A&G has mentioned before- it took a little over 3 years for the newspapers of the 1930s to be honest about the Great Depression and in the current 'Great Recession', honesty is starting to peer through the cracks and escape in little droplets of truth.
Here's a rather honest assessment from MarketWatch.com, an otherwise overt cheerleader for Wall St. and the markets... (article in quotes will be in blue font):
"Is the market on meds? ... the rally continues even though it’s been a panic a minute on Wall Street. There was the muni-bond panic, the euro panic, the Greece panic, the dollar panic, the quantitative-easing panic, the inflation panic, oil and gold and commodities panic, the Japanese earthquake/nuclear-disaster panic, the Middle East panic, the S&P U.S. ratings panic. To keep it current, we’re in the middle of the debt-ceiling panic and the International Monetary Fund sex-crime panic."
The scares keep coming, but the market goes up and up. So what’s driving all of this? ... Most investors believe we’re in the early stages of a global recovery, and they’re going to bet on it whether it happens or not. Notice I wrote “believe.” This rally is based more on confidence than any actual data. Home prices are in the tank and sinking. The unemployment rate is still high, with disappointing claim numbers — there were 434,000 jobless claims in the week ending May 7 — still rolling in regularly."
"Even for all of the panics mentioned, the biggest ones are still out there: slumping global demand, a debt-ridden Europe, a banking sector that’s still full of risk and includes the loan-happy Chinese financials."
"Still, the market goes up. Have you heard even one good reason why? Do the technical analysts explain it? Do the value buyers explain it? Do the economists projecting 2.7% annual growth fully explain it? ... They don’t. The best reason for the rally today is the rally itself. Call it the stock market of dreams: If we buy it at a premium, it will go higher..."
Dumb is contagious. Not every chief executive can be saved from himself or herself ... For the rest of us, our compulsion to buy stocks isn’t that much different than the buy-happy CEO. We do it because everyone is doing it. We don’t need a reason, just the sunny outlook.
It’s not a bad strategy as long as people don’t look to closely at the truth, or go off their meds."
~OK, let's summarize this astute and honest assessment from MarketWatch:
1) The stock market is not behaving Rationally or Sensibly, and honestly hasn't since March 2009 lows when the Federal Reserve started direct cash infusions into the markets.
2) All the stock rallies are in defiance of statistical fact and reality; their "confidence" is based on nothing.
3) Both Investors and Americans on the whole Want to believe we're recovering and Dammit, that's just how its' going to be.
4) "Dumb is contagious" when it comes to investing, and there are a lot of followers (bleating sheep) and no real leaders who have the masses' financial well being in mind.
This was not the type of opinion piece you'd have found in a mainstream news source in 2009 or 2010 so it shows that its becoming more difficult for media to joyfully push the lie.
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