|
Well, what happened? To be quite honest, the market has been unbelievably resilient, and it can only be attributed to the sheer fact that most individuals are not fully invested in the stock market and therefore there is no panic. The professionals continue to remain calm and most investment advisors are cautioning their clients but there is no outright selling in light of some very miserable news over the last few weeks.
So, lets talk about the jobs report. This is very simple and I am shocked most haven't caught on to this: Companies are hiring, but the jobs that were created that have been lost to this point are not coming back--companies have been exceptionally good at using their current employees. Expansion of business will grow jobs, but most companies are producing record earnings with little expansion of existing work force.
What can be done? Not much, and stimulus is simply an attempt to control confidence since it has done little but help banks hoard cash and earn free money while at the same time inflate the market--which is good in its own right, but does nothing for the majority of americans other than indirectly through the market.
We are also still going through a process of housing price adjustments. Rents though are in line with mortgages, so a bottom is definitely here. The only real issue is debt at this point and though its a long way off, we will need to figure out what America will do with the amount of money it owes. How this turns out is anyone's guess, but we will need to tax more and reduce services and its going to very painful at some point, but I am sure our government realizes this and simply wants to get to better times, but until we realize 8% unemployment is here to stay and we need to retrain individuals rather than "create jobs" as our primary focus we will have high unemployment.
As most of you long time readers know, we are in a global competition for talent and unfortunately Americans are lazy. This isn't coming from me, this is coming from every non native person I know. Don't get me wrong, America is still filled with great minds and has an undying commitment to entreprenuerism, but something has been lost....a sense of personal accountability, i.e. "The government needs to provide me a job" instead of "I need to improve my skills" and the latter is where our government should focus its efforts!
Both Democrats and Republicans have it wrong. The country does need to support the unfortunate, but not at the massive expense of the well off. We don't need to create jobs, we need to simply be more creative and take personal responsibility to adjust our skills as the market demands.
This "endless summer" will continue until everyone across the globe realizes that they must upgrade their skills, upgrade their knowledge, and get into the notion that this is a global competition for talent and resources and until everyone takes some personal responsibility and governments take back promises they knew they could never keep, we are going to be in this for a long time.
| 
