It seems that just about everyone I talk to is rubbing their eyes at the Dow's blast through the 8500 barrier. Yes, the economy is in good shape. The federal government will post its first budget surplus in thirty years.
Unemployment is at a quarter century low.
Better yet, all across America managers are burning the midnight oil struggling to figure out how to wring further efficiencies from their businesses - and keep productivity growth high. Still, the stock market's heady surge has had an aura of being driven higher by the animal spirits of investors and the madness of the crowd rather than from a push by the fundamentals. Whirlpools of speculative bubbles often ripple on top of a steady stream of enterprise. Perhaps what we are witnessing is a Clinton poll bounce - the other gravity defying feat of recent weeks. At least that's what David Hale, economist at Zurich Kemper, thinks.