Jester,

I suppose that if one considers the market to *be* the economy, rather than a reflection of it, I suppose it makes at least a littel more sense. And lt cap has noted from time to time, that some economic things are better - e.g. jobs, if one can trust the federal figures (I know one can't do that, but things do seem a good deal better than when we were on the edge of a depression. And you've been absolutely right on when the fed and other govt agencies project a figure for the growth of the economy, when we do get there, the over-promise under-deliver effect has always kicked in, for years now. (Which makes me wonder - if the economic analysts are so consistently wrong, why haven't they been fired years ago? Unless - it's done purposively, tied to other agendas.)

I am completely dumfounded by how wrong I've been about what I think the markets will do - for years now. All the things we mention - such as lt saying years ago that the zombie banks and a real estate overvaluation was going to crash things when it hit the fan - well, so much of our pessimism seems to have been the wrong guess. At least the things that I thought would happen. But then, I promised all of you here that there was no way Trump would win this election. If he gets impeached (a prospect I consider highly unlikely - my understanding is that you can't charge a President with a crime until he's out of office. And Mike Pence would be worse than Trump, in the sense that he could probably carry out this scary agenda in a more effect way than Trump.

One last thing I don't 'get': The markets seem (I thought) to have priced in all of Trump's promisses (deregulation of oversite of companies, lowering business tax rates, etc.) He hasn't been able to pass any legislation. Why wouldn't the market become more fearful of non-delivery of those promises. Beats me.

Jamok,

I agree. I see in recent days Goldman lowered their estimates of Q1 eps growth. Same old story, start high, lower later. Meanwhile multiples keep expanding despite as you say a failure to implement the expected tax cuts and infrastructure spending etc.

One theory re $ellen's recent change from the Fed rhetoric in recent weeks is she wants to finish her term out with the markets looking good. That's in February. So just like Greenspan and Bernanke before, punting basically.