Stocks Surge On Bank Plan, Rise In Home Sales – NPR.org
Stock markets took a big upward swing Monday on news of the Fed’s and the Treasury’s plans to encourage private investors to buy up to $2 trillion in real estate assets from banks. Also real estate showed improvement, according to the Washington Post, with an increase in sales of 4.72% in February, although prices are still down almost 5% compared to the same month last year. A drop in sales was expected.
I don’t think it’s time to break out the champagne just yet. The country’s economy is in a massive hole that took years to dig. It will take more time to get us out of it. When employment numbers start to rebound and the larger economy shows positive growth numbers for a couple of quarters, then we can pop the bubbly. Taken together it does show some signs of life in what has thus far been an economically bleak year.
Despite the side-show provided by the AIG bonus kerfuffle, it shows that the Obama administration is doing the right things to guide the economy to recovery. I fail to understand why people are so pissed about $165 million in bonuses, when that represents less than 1% of the money we gave AIG essentially without strings so they could in turn hand it to counter parties (mostly big banks) in the credit default swaps AIG backed who had already gotten billions from the government. Where was the outrage over that?
