Annual Borrowing Costs vs. National Debt

Although our national debt is massive in absolute terms ($14 trillion+), when compared to the size of our economy, it's still very manageable (93%). In fact, it's 30% lower than it was after WWII (which we grew ourselves out of without ANY cuts in government spending), when our debt ratio peaked at 122% in 1946.

According to government statistics, our annual borrowing costs are currently only 1.5% of GDP, near all-time lows. That is less than HALF of what it was when Reagan was president (3.1%). Viewed in these terms, how can anyone claim that we are in the midst of a national debt crisis?

In case you were curious what occurred in the early 1980's that caused our debt ratio and borrowing costs to spike, it happens to coincide with the Reagan tax cuts which dropped the top marginal rate from in the 70's to the upper 20's and our deficit exploded.

Source: White House Office of Management & Budget

Unemployment Stats

We can't forget the depths of the crisis President Obama inherited, when the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month:

Over the past year, the private sector has steadily added jobs while government jobs have steadily been eliminated:

Data Source: BLS.gov

Michael Moore and Wolf Blitzer

If you haven't seen Michael Moore making the TV circuit to promote his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, the clips below showcase his best performance. He makes Wolf Blitzer looks like an amateur, with repetitive, sound-bite inspired questions:





My favorite moment came when Wolf asked Michael how he would respond to allegations that he is being hypocritical in his movie because he himself has benefited and become wealthy from our capitalistic system. To which Michael Moore responded:

"I wonder if there was a Wolf Blitzer 200 years ago who asked Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams, or George Washington: "Hey you guys are wealthy land owners, you've benefited from the Kings system, what are you complaining about? whats this revolt all about?"

Brilliant.

PS: If you missed Wolf's appearance on celebrity Jeopardy, you missed the man who represents one of the supposed leaders in cable news making a fool of himself and getting blown out by comedian Andy Richter. His grand total: -$4600.

What was Yahoo! Thinking?

I was checking the news on Yahoo! today and came across an article entitled Millions Face Shrinking Social Security Payments in which I found something incredibly dishonest. Along with the article, directly below the headline, was a picture of President Obama, leading the reader to make a visual link between the president and the headline implying that it is because of him that social security payments will be going down.

The caption on the picture, written in light grey in tiny letters, is as follows:

"President Obama talks about the Afghan elections Friday, Aug. 21st, 2009, outside the White..."

So the picture isn't even associated with the article! How can they be so intellectually dishonest? Why does the media want seniors to be so afraid of the President?

Here is a screenshot of the article:

To make the issue even worse, the article states that the amount of the checks will NOT be decreasing (which would be illegal) but would be remaining the same, with no cost of living adjustment. The reason that the checks will be "shrinking" is because of increased premiums for medicare.

So, embedded in the article is another reason why we need to reform the health care system, but Yahoo! chose to portray the article as President Obama personally taking money away from senior citizens. Add that to the death panel lies and a pattern of scaring seniors starts to emerge...

What could their motives possibly be?

A Little Perspective on Cost

As health care reform continues to bring out the worst in us, I thought I'd try to put the projected costs of Obama's plan into a little perspective.

According to a report from The Congressional Research Service, after the passage of the supplemental funding bill of 2008 on June 30, 2008, Congress had spent a total of $864 billion since 9/11/01 to fight the War on Terror (74% on Iraq alone and less than 1% on medical care for veteran). Once you include estimates for 2009 and 2010, the total spent rises to over $1 trillion in the last 9 years.

Or, to put it into more understandable terms:

As of February 2009, DOD’s average monthly obligations for contracts and pay were about $10.9 billion, including $8.4 billion for Iraq, and $2.6 billion for Afghanistan, a monthly average some $3 billion below last year.

If we accept that 9/11 was the root cause of this spending, then it is also fair to state that it was the murder of 2,974 people that gave Bush the "political capital" to initiate the massive government spending program known as the Global War on Terror. If you compare that to the 22,000 people that died last year due to lack of health insurance, over 7x the number of people that died on 9/11, the cognitive dissonance begins to set in.

With most estimates of the cost of Obama's health care plan ranging from $300 billion - $1 trillion over the next 10 years, how can ANYONE go on television and claim that the country can't afford to do it. Where were those same people claiming that we couldn't afford the Global War on Terror? My recollection may be a bit fuzzy, but I don't think ANYONE was claiming that we couldn't afford it. How are health care executives that make tens and hundreds of millions of dollars off of denying these now deceased people access to medical care any different than Al-Qaeda?

So, spending over a trillion dollars (over $10 billion a month) after the death of around 3000 people is a no brainer, but spending an equivalent amount to stop an ANNUAL death total of around 20,000 is considered political suicide? What happened to our government...

None of this even takes into account that the cost of health care causes an American to declare bankruptcy roughly every 30 seconds.

As a bit of a side note about George W Bush and "political capital," listen to this clip from 1999 where Bush claims that if he has the political capital, he WILL invade Iraq:

Should Progressives Form Their Own Party?

As Bill Maher so elloquently put it on one of his recent shows:

"Every time Obama tries to take on a progressive cause, there's a political party standing in his way: the Democrats...

We don't have a left and a right party in this country anymore, we have a center-right party and a crazy party. Over the last 30 odd years, Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into a mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture, and the pharmaceutical lobby; that's the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-Earthers, and civil war reenactors who mostly commuincate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans. And who actually worry that Obama is a Socialist, Socialst?! he's not even a liberal...

Shouldn't there be one party that unambigiously supports cutting the military budget, a party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marraige, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, legalizing pot, and steep direct taxing of polluters? These aren't radical ideas, a majority of americans are either already for them or would be if they were properly argued and defended. What we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats. Because bottom line: Democrats are the new Republicans."

Watch the entire segment below:

With that in mind, the Financial Times had an interesting article from Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan and potentially the next Prime Minister. In it, he details his political philosophy of "fraternity:"

• "Although freedom and equality are important for human beings, if they are followed to fundamentalist extremes, they can both result in immeasurable horrors. Therefore, Coudenhove-Kalergi recognised the necessity of a concept that could achieve a balance and maintain respect for humanity. That is what he sought in the idea of fraternity."
• "Freedom is supposed to be the highest of all values but in the fundamentalist pursuit of capitalism, which can be described as ‘freedom formalised in economic terms’, has resulted in people being treated not as an end but as a means"
• "In our present times, fraternity can be described as a principle that aims to adjust to the excesses of the current globalised brand of capitalism and make adjustments to accommodate the local economic practices that have been fostered through our traditions."
• "I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the global economy has damaged traditional economic activities and market fundamentalism has destroyed local communities."
• "Under the principle of fraternity, we will not implement policies that leave economic activities in areas relating to human lives and safety, such as agriculture, the environment and medicine, at the mercy of the tides of globalism… Our responsibility as politicians is to refocus our attention on those non-economic values that have been thrown aside by the march of globalism."
• "The ties that bring people together have become weaker and the spirit of public service has also dimmed…we aim to build a society of coexistence in which people can rediscover the ties that bring them together, help each other, and find meaning and fulfilment in performing a useful social role.”
• "We reject the Ministry of Finance-led theory of fiscal reconstruction that relies on the imposition of uniform restrictions on, or the abolishment of, social welfare payments and which seeks to take shortcuts by raising consumption tax...(and) the bureaucrat-led system of centralised government and the indiscriminate spending facilitated by that system, from the social safety net collapse and greater inequality of wealth that results from an uncritical faith in globalism and finally, from the public loss of faith in politics following unhealthy collusion between government, civil service and industry."

Knowing that this man may become the leader of the worlds 2nd largest economy, I say Progressives co-opt his platform of Fraternity and form their own political party.

As a side note, Mr Hatoyama had this to say about the US economic system:

“The recent financial crisis has suggested to many people that the era of American unilateralism may come to an end. It has also made people harbour doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency. I also feel that as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of the US-led globalism is coming to an end and that we are moving away from a unipolar world led by the US towards an era of multipolarity.”

So Japan openly sees Iraq as a failure and the US as the root cause of the financial disaster. I wonder what the rest of the world thinks...

Where is the Single Payer Debate?

With all of the attention on the pending health care overhaul focusing primarily on scare tactics, misinformation, and rowdy town hall meetings, one option has flown conspicuously under the radar: a national single-payer system, or more easily understood as Medicare-for-all. The benefits of such a system, which President Obama supported as a Senator, include:

• health care delivery would remain private, i.e. private doctors, private hospitals, etc
• the government would act as the sole provider of health insurance which would drastically reduce paperwork and administrative costs (medicare operates at a 3-4% overhead as compared to 30-40% for the average for-profit insurance company)
• no more insurance executives making hundreds of millions or, in the case of GroupHealth executive Bill McGwire, billions of dollars off of the sick and dying
  
• by creating the largest pool of insureds possible, it would maximize the spreading of risk and provide the cheapest possible form of insurance

So why hasn't this potential solution been a part of the debate even though recent polls suggest that it is the option most Americans would support, while they may not even know they are supporting it?

According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, FAIR, the answer simple: interlocking boards of directors among the media, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries. Their investigative reporting found that:

"nine major media corporations and their major outlets, Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), CBS, Time Warner (CNN, Time), News Corporation (Fox), New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. (Newsweek), Tribune Co. (Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times) and Gannett (USA Today) found connections to six different insurance companies. Five out of the nine media corporations studied shared a director with an insurance company; two insurance companies—Chubb and Berkshire Hathaway—were represented by more than one media corporation director.

"The study also found crossover between these media corporations and several large pharmaceutical companies, such as Eli Lilly, Merck and Novartis, whose profits would also likely be negatively impacted by a single-payer system. Out of the nine media corporations studied, six had directors who also represented the interests of at least one pharmaceutical company. In fact, save for CBS, every media corporation had board connections to either an insurance or pharmaceutical company."

This overlapping wouldn't be cause for concern had FAIR not discovered the following trend:

"single-payer was mentioned in only 164 articles or news segments from January 1 through June 30, 2009; over 70% of these mentions did not include the voice of a single-payer advocate. Over 45% of the pieces that did include a single-payer advocate were episodes of the Ed Show, an MSNBC program whose host, Ed Shultz, frequently advocates for single-payer healthcare. Without the Ed Show, just 19% of articles or news segments that mentioned single-payer would have included an actual advocate of the plan."

So the next time you hear a negative portrayal of a national single-payer system, such as Canada's, ask yourself if the media corporation telling you that has a conflict of interest in doing so...

Hazardous Health Care Debates

Rachel Maddow had a brilliant segment on her show tonight that every Democrat and sane Republican in Congress needs to watch. She gives a great summary of how far our political discourse has fallen and how it got there. I hope we aren't near some tipping point...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Torture Photos

In one of the biggest departures from his campaign promises of openness and transparency, President Obama's Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision requiring the Pentagon to disclose photos depicting alleged abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photos had originally been ordered to be released due to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan is on the record as saying:

“The President of the United States and the Nation’s highest-ranking military officers responsible for ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have determined that disclosure by the government of the photographs at issue in this case would pose a significant risk to the lives and physical safety of American military and civilian personnel by inciting violence targeting those personnel"

President Obama has stated:

“It's… my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

So let me get this straight? Abusing detainees is legally ok, but releasing photos depicting the abuse isn't? There is a massive cognitive dissonance in that reasoning.

So far, the government has admitted that the photos depict “soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees” and one image showing a handcuffed and hooded prisoner and a soldier who is acting “as if” he is violating a detainee with a broom handle. Others, however, are claiming far worse.

According to Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted the official inquiry into Abu Ghraib:

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency... The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

One of the sworn statements given to Mr Taguba from a detainee, which was released due to a Freedom of Information Act request, went as follows:

“I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

Either the photos show that Bush Administration is guilty of systematic torture and therefore the photos shouldn't be released out of concern of retaliation against our troops, or the pictures are 99% harmless and should be published. So, if President Obama really believes that we are in the first scenario and continues to block the photos from being released, he must launch an investigation into the previous administrations "enhanced interrogation" program. The President can't have it both ways.

To put an exclaimation point on this insanity, this story was initially broken back on May 10th 2004 by Sy Hersh in The New Yorker. How has this flown so far under the radar that all of the facts still aren't out by 2009? I would guess most Americans still have no idea that nearly 100 detainees have died in US custody since 2002 ...

Health Insurance Consumer Protections

The White House just released its 8 requirements for the health care system overhaul. To quote the President, in his newsletter:

Over the next month there is going to be an avalanche of misinformation and scare tactics from those seeking to perpetuate the status quo. But we know the cost of doing nothing is too high. Health care costs will double over the next decade, millions more will become uninsured, and state and local governments will go bankrupt.

The principles are:

Health Care "Inflation"

When Clinton tried to overhaul the health care system back in 1993, 40 million Americans were uninsured and it cost $912 billion. Now, only 15 years later, the number of uninsured has increased to almost 50 million and Americans spend $2.5 trillion. That is a 25% increase in uninsured Americans and a 174%, or 11.5% annual, increase in cost. With inflation typically running around 3%, why is inflation in the health care industry almost 4 times higher?

Some other interesting facts to keep in mind as PhRMA, the drugmakers lobby, launches its $100 million ad campaign against health care reform:

• Premium costs are projected to rise another 9% next year, an increase that 42% of employers plan to pass on to their workers, according to a report last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Earnings per hour climbed by a 0.7% pace on average over the last three months, the Labor Department said earlier this month, the smallest gain since the agency began keeping records in 1964
• The share of insured workers with at least a $1,000 deductible has almost doubled since 2006 to 18%
• Health-care spending will account for 20% of U.S. gross domestic product in 2018, or $1 in $5 spent, compared with 16% of GDP, $1 of $6 spent, in 2008 (As a point of reference, Canada's system costs 10% of their GDP and the average of all 30 members of the OECD is 8.9%. That means we currently spend twice what the world does for their health care)
  

Most experts who've analyzed President Obama's health care plan estimate it's cost between $1 and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. If we are already spending $2.5 trillion per year, why are people so shocked at the price tag of the Obama plan? If his plan works, it would be save massive amounts of money, which would then stimulate the economy. Sounds good to me.

Pay Czar's First Challenge

In what will probably be the first major clash between a bailed-out bank and President Obama's newly appointed "Pay Czar" Kenneth Feinberg, the head of Citi's Phibro energy trading business is pushing the struggling bank to honor his $100 million compensation package. I understand the need to honor existing contracts, but if the government hadn't stepped in with a $45 billion bailout, the bank would have gone bankrupt and the contract would be meaningless.

One thing to remember is that when Citigroup agreed to take money from the TARP, it also agreed to follow the stipulations of the contract. Section 5.3 of the TARP states that Congress has the ability to put new conditions or requirements on any bank, even retroactively, who took money from the program. So, if Citigroup didn't want to be subject to an agreement that gave the government unilateral power to change the contract, they shouldn't have taken the money. I find it poetic justice that the banks are complaining because they didn't read the fine print of the loan. Now they know how their customers feel.

Citi is also unique out of the TARP recepients in that, while competitors are trying to get out of the TARP by repaying the money, they have started the process of converting the governments preferred shares into common equity. This means that We the People are about to have a 34% ownership stake in the bank. So why shouldn't we have a say over their executive compensation?

This story should be interesting to follow.

Declassified Satellite Images

Satellite images of polar ice (that had been classified by the Bush administration) that were declassified last week by President Obama show just how devastating and extreme the polar meltdown has been in recent years. You read that correctly: George W Bush classified pictures that gave dramatic evidence of global climate change. I guess it was just another aspect of his War on Science. One amazing image can be seen above.

The photos, and their 1-meter resolution, helped scientists estimate the amount of ice that melted in the summer of 2007, the largest melt on record, at more than a million square kilometers. The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has warned that America's satellite fleet is aging and may no longer be effective at monitoring and predicting climate change. This sentiment has also been reflected by the National Academy of Sciences in their warning that the environmental satellite network was "at risk of collapse." NASA had planned to put a high-tech, carbon-monitoring satellite into orbit earlier this year, but it crashed shortly after lift-off.

The good news is that President Obama, in his Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, has already allocated $170 million for climate modelling and the NOAA is looking for an additional $390 million to upgrade its environmental satellite fleet in 2010.

Here are two more of the freshly declassified pictures:

Nuclear Nonproliferation

The Obama diplomacy must be working. In the past few months, there have been great strives in nuclear nonproliferation as well as reduction of existing warheads, despite some very volatile regimes.

One of the biggest announcements thus far has been the agreement between President Obama and Russian President Medvedev with the stated goal of reducing the world's two largest nuclear stockpiles by as much as 33%, which would be the the lowest levels of any U.S.-Russia accord. Because the US and Russia account for almost 90% of the worlds nuclear weapons, this is a great first step. Russia, however, is not the biggest obstacle at the moment, that title is shared by Iran and North Korea.

President Obama made clear during his campaign that he would persue a new strategy of mutual respect and diplomacy, which is appears to be upholding. He has already extended a hand to the Iranian regime, it's up to them to reach back. For those who missed it, Obama set forth his plan for Iran in his speech in Cairo:

This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is in fact a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I've made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question now is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.

I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect. But it is clear to all concerned that when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point. This is not simply about America's interests. It's about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.

I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. (Applause.) And any nation — including Iran — should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I'm hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.

That is the talk I like to see out of my president. Hilary Clinton, however, was a bit less eloquent in her appearance on Meet the Press this weekend when she said that Iran does “not have the right to obtain a nuclear weapon” and continued to say, with a total lack of irony:

“What we want to do is to send a message to whoever is making these decisions, that if you’re pursuing nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidating, of projecting your power, we’re not going to let that happen,” Clinton said. “Your pursuit is futile.”

Though Iran's nuclear ambitions are a major focus, North Korea successfully tested a nuclear device earlier this year and has been claiming that any attempt to enforce the new UN sanctions, such as boarding/inspecting any North Korean ship, would be considered an act of war. , even going as far as saying that it would "wipe the United States off the map." The good news, however, is that North Korea's Foreign Minister said over the weekend that it may be open to new negotiations on its nuclear program as long as they are held outside of the upcoming six-party talks, including the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.

Now, we just have to wait and see if the talk translates into action.

Democratic In-Fighting: Executive Branch

The media has done a good job showing the battles within the Democratic party vis-a-vis Congress, but they also exist within the Executive branch of government. Two examples that haven't gotten the attention they deserve involve torture prosecution and, in a story that is just breaking, antitrust enforcement.

President Obama has repeatedly stated that he wishes to look forward and not open prosecutions of any Bush administration policy, but a few weeks ago Attorney General Holder announced that he is "considering having a prosecutor investigate allegations of CIA torture of suspected terrorists, The Washington Post said." He has, however, also announced that the prosecutions would be limited to those who committed acts that went above and beyond the ones outlined in the famous torture memos and NOT to the architects of the program. This viewpoint has been eloquently challenged by the progressive Democrats in a letter to the AG by Senator Russ Feingold. I hope Holder listens...

Back in May, President Obama's antitrust chief, Christine Varney, announced that the Justice Department “will be aggressively pursuing cases where monopolists try to use their dominance in the marketplace to stifle competition and harm consumers." Apparently, the Bush Administration didn't just stop enforcing the antitrust laws already on the books, but enacted a legal policy that impeded the government’s ability to fight anticompetitive conduct by monopolistic companies in court. Despite the announcement and Mrs Varney making it clear that courts should no longer refer to the Bush administration policy, other departments within the Executive Branch are refusing to go along.

Why can't Democrats get their house in order and govern as one? It's the one aspect of politics that the Dems need to learn from the Republicans. For good or for bad, the Republican party is great at unifying their message and getting their legislative agenda passed. Personally, I suspect lobbying contributions have something to do with it.

Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy

Much to my amazement, the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama is not a US citizen is still hanging around. Even though the Supreme Court refused to hear the case due to lack of evidence, many in the mainstream media (especially at CNN and Fox News) continue to fan the fires. Here is a great clip of Jon Stewart, who was just voted the most trusted newscaster in America in a Time.com poll, debunking the "mystery" on his show from July 22, 2009.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Born Identity
www.thedailyshow.com
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Bush 3.0?

Obama, what are you thinking:

"The Obama administration has declined requests from U.N. human rights investigators for information on secret prisons and for private interviews with inmates at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.N. officials said, dampening their hopes of greater U.S. cooperation on human rights issues."

Where is the transparency and accountability you ran on? Doesn't the president realize that by refusing access, the US is admitting wrongdoing? Why hide the transgressions of the previous administration?

The progressive wing of the Democratic party is going to have a field day with this. I just hope the Right understands that the frustration is because President Obama isn't being liberal/progressive ENOUGH, and not because we believe he is a lying, unamerican, secret muslim...

Obama Economics: Domestic vs Abroad

In an interesting poll courtesy of Bloomberg, it appears that President Obama's economic leadership is much more popular abroad than here in the U.S:

"In Europe and Asia, 87% of respondents say they view Obama positively, compared with just 49% in the U.S. His standing among American investors is even lower on economic matters: only a quarter of U.S. poll respondents rate his economic policies as “good” or “excellent,” compared with more than half in Europe and Asia."

Why don't Americans have the same optimism as the rest of the world? I knew that Bush was unpopular, but I never would have guessed that the world would have been so happy to be rid of him.

Why is the optimism warranted?

Equity investors around the world have done well since Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration. The gains were most pronounced in Asia, where the MSCI Asia Pacific Index has risen 28%. In the U.S., the S&P 500 Index has risen 19%. The benchmark index for U.S. equities has rallied 41% over the past four months, led by a 95% rise in financial firms. European investors...have fared less well: The Eurostoxx 50 Index has risen 14%.

That sounds like cause for optimism to me.