With the markets up and Obama sounding more exuberant, Bob Stein, a senior economist at First Trust Advisors, tells NRO: “The economic contraction is still with us but losing steam. Core retail sales have now gone up two months in a row and in a slowdown related to falling monetary velocity the consumer should be a leading sign of economic activity.”

And David Smick, author of The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy, offers his economic read this morning:

A lot of people in the financial markets had expected a bear market relief rally starting a month ago. Now it’s here. What happens is that the market’s negative momentum builds to an unsustainable point where a correction takes place and the “short” positions in the markets are forced to unwind. The stock market abruptly recovers some. I unfortunately have my doubts about the sustainability of this rebound because of the continued uncertainty of the banking situation. We need to fix the banks. Until that happens, notwithstanding some of the banks’ slightly positive recent earnings reports, recovery cannot gain any sustainable traction. I hope I’m wrong, but I seriously doubt it. To hype this market uptick as being more than it is only puts your readers in a position where they potentially lose financially even more than they already have.
To date Americans collectively have seen $15 trillion of their wealth go puff in the night. That’s more than our annual GDP.

And Bob Stein tells NRO: “The economic contraction is still with us but losing steam. Core retail sales have now gone up two months in a row and in a slowdown related to falling monetary velocity the consumer should be a leading sign of economic activity.”