At The End Of Several Journeys

We say good bye to one of our contractors today as he finished the touch up and artsy fartsy finish to a few walls once buried in mud.  We also began the paperwork to start a voluntary project, to extend our sons bedroom and god knows it needs extending.  The end of one of our journeys was the prayer service this morning at Serra Catholic School.  While it ran a little long, it was a moving emotional reminder of 9 incredible years of our sons involvement  at catholic school.  It really didn't hit me till we were on the main floor of the gym laying our hands on his forehead and reading the blessing for the kids.  I looked at my wife who had big alligator tears in hers eyes and just assumed one more thing had gone wrong with the project at home.  It was then when I realized she was mourning the end of Jack's years at Serra.  Even then it hit me.  The years of dropping him off at school, running his lunch he had forgot, endless hours of homework, the star watch night at the school, the sleep over on the tall ship Pilgrim and the 9 years flashed before me and it was moving.  We had managed to give our son a great education founded in our faith and religion.  Job well done. 

Tonight our 5 foot 9 son enjoyed himself at the 8^th grade graduation dance while mom and I celebrated our success with a great dinner at Hanna's.  Jessica took care of us like a sister or mom would take care of  her family.  Dave came by to say hey, patron extraordinaire.  Life is good.

Life is good.

Mr. Market Opened up in a good mood today.

The Frenchies ala Mr. Jean-Claude Trichet came around to supporting a bond shell game for Brother Greece.  The supportive rumors that boosted the market last week, which we complained did not have any details attached turns out to be a roll over of bonds for Greece.  It is a classical case of robbing Nikolas to pay Maximus (Peter to Pay Pal).  Trichet is encouraging Eurozone members to buy new Greek bonds to pay off the ones that are coming due.  That makes about as much sense as a central bank buying its own bonds and financing it by printing more money.  Hey wait a minute that what the US had been doing for the last two years with QE I and QE II.  There was also good retail number in many parts of Europe.  German factory order also made for a nice awakening of Mr. Market today.  The Bank of Australia chose to leave interest rates alone last night so that threat was taken off the table.  Inflation in the Phiilipines (which had been heating up) cooled off based upon the figures release last night.

All of that made for a good opening and that feel good high lasted until the last hour of trading.  The consumer credit number came out rather healthy as we expected, but we can't take a win in that category.  We called the number a full billion over the consensus.  We said 6 Billion versus 5 billion.  The number came in at 6.2 billion, but when you drill down into the report, the largest jump was in student loans.  That does nothing for the economy. When you back out the student loan numbers, the consumer credit number is 4.9 billion.  I can't believe Mr. Market dissected that before the close of the market today, so the last hour drop must have had something to do with what Bernanke might say in his speech in Atlanta.  There were rumors he might start suggesting we tighten capital reserves at member banks which would have the same impact of interest rate increases.