Bollettino

So what is up with the stock market? There we have a honey of a victory, hanging right above them, CNN and Fox news anchors dancing in the streets, and all they can come up with is 20 some measly points?

Perhaps they aren�t into the whacked optimism purveyed in today�s Floyd Norris column. Floyd, who likes the middle, has jabbed to the left (his exposes about Tyco) and jabbed to the right (his cheerleading about the ever enduring consumer), and here he is definitely in full apologia mode. However, the optimism is always tempered by the conditional modal -- might, may, could -- because nobody believes in Dow 36,000 any more. His guess is that the economy is now set to roar back. The consumer is ready� the businesses are ready� and the international situation is ready�

But we have our doubts. Maybe the traders were leafing through their Fortunes this week. The traditional Fortune 500 issue is the big seller. This year�s included the kind of downer article on American capitalism that even Marxists aren�t writing any more. How�s this for a set of figures? The Fortune 500 profits sank a whopping 62% last year. The explanation Fortune favors is that the previous years were bogus � a lot of revenue and profit inflatin� going on. This is the kind of thing to give us all the creeps � that feeling of the presence of the impalpable which overcomes Hamlet on spying his dead dad. The figures are incredibly bad, the more you press them. Here�s another one for the record books: �In fact, it appears that at least $310 billion of 2001�s energy related revenues were overstated.�

The question is this: is there a lag between stock prices and the �new� accounting? If there is � if it gradually begins to dawn on investors that not only is next year not going to get any better, but, retrospectively, the past is getting worse and worse -- well, then we will see the bottom of the market. And we won�t like it.

This should set a fine limit on Rumsfeld's colonialist fantasies. Although Rumsfeldians throughout history have bankrupted states pursuing the holy grail of absolute power, and there's nothing to say that the US is immune. There's surprisingly little concern about the new coalition of the unwilling -- France, Germany and Russia. The idea that the US, with Iraq, is gonna be coming into the big bucks any day now is absurd. If France and Germany truly re-orient themselves to Russia and China, this could be bad news for the US economy in the long run. To imagine that the Russian market pales in comparison to what Smilin' Jay Garner is gonna sweat out of those Iraqis is the kind of delusion that we thought George Bush, sr., whooped out of his boy in George Jr. drunk drivin' days. Perhaps not. Which will make the next year bitter for all of us.