Productive Economy leads Team Pessimism 17 Trillion to Zero

As I write, the Dow is breaking an all-time record of 17,000 on the back of a positive jobs number that potentially means a sooner end to extraordinary stimulus from the Federal Reserve.

We were told by many experts over for many years that good economic news – which probably couldn’t be produced anyway – would be bad news once it eventually came.

Well, it’s here and the market likes it. How about that?

This morning’s non farm payroll employment report for the month of June was a blowout. At 288,000 jobs added, it was the fifth big hiring increase in a row. The number of long-term unemployed Americans (out of work for 27 weeks +) is now down to 3.1 million, or 32% of all jobless people. This is a low not seen since June of 2008. The Labor Force Participation Rate remained steady this month, which means that the net gains cannot be simply attributed to retiring boomers leaving the hunt.

In addition, the April jobs report saw a big revision higher to just over 300k and May got a bump too. These are the type of year-over-year numbers we used to see in the late 1990’s and are un-f*ck-withable.

If you were rooting for betting on collapse, well, this ain’t it. Reality decided not to confirm your religious or political beliefs about what “should” happen this time around.

Headline unemployment is now at 6.1%, the lowest we’ve seen in forever. The conventional wisdom was that this -combined with last month’s uptick in inflation – would spook the market and raise the specter of sooner rate hikes.

To which investors are saying “Okay fine.”

So what else you got? Bubbles? Geopolitics?

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