Dow Flirts with 10,000?!!?!? Where's My Wealth?!??!

So after a YEAR of dismal results and a Nero Burning Rome loss of wealth for the overwhelming majority of investors, the Dow Jones Industrial Average breached the 10,000 mark today -- only briefly though. That's a level the DJIA hasn't seen since right before the financial markets were freefalling into the abyss!

As I always stated the Dow is a fucked up means of measuring, judging, estimating economic activity (please, can we have new measurement, and we can't trust the GDP figures either), because the US economy is still in diarrhea-filled toilet -- unemployment has topped 10% (and that's going to be a persistent level of chronic, pervasive unemployment), the financial section STILL isn't lending money to non-financial sector businesses (obviously companies like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are making their bones), the retail sector is still anemic, and the housing market is just waiting for the next round of foreclosures.

The big Wall Street banks are posting increasing profits, mainly because of the trading the profits that they're making by trading amongst themselves.

Even if the DJIA has recovered to pre-shit storm levels, have the portfolios of John Q. Investors

Employers are still laying workers off, and the thing about that is, companies look "better" to Wall Street when they have less expenses, i.e. payroll and insurance premiums. This is one of the reasons why companies are looking "attractive" in the short-term (the next quarter or two), but that's what has gotten American companies in trouble in the first place. The slavery to Wall Street expectations and being offered up to the blood thirsty god Profit has forced most important and sustaining jobs offshore to China (where the government purposely keeps the currency artifically low, so the goods & services are cheaper than what they would normally be).

The New York Fed has set a new stage for the rich to get richer (just watch for all the bonuses that AIG, Goldman Sachs and the rest of the tax coffer robbers over the next couple of months), and because the Zero Sum Game is the only game in town in the current (and future) economy, be prepared to follow the rules of Machiavelli.