The full Barron’s article, "No Exit, No Entry," requires a subscription, but you can read more at Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture.
Alan Abelson in this weekend’s Barron’s:
“THE BULLS SEEMINGLY HAVE DEVELOPED an immunity to bad news. We’re admittedly jealous, since we’d love to glom onto the potion that makes everything, no matter how dire, come up smelling like a rose. It isn’t that we’re oblivious to good news; frankly, we hunger for it. Thus, when Bloomberg reports, citing data from Paychex, Intuit, Insperity and the National Federation of Independent Business, that small businesses, which have been down in the dumps forever, suddenly are energized by a surge of optimism and have started to actually hire people, we feel like emitting a discreet cheer.
But we somehow can’t blithely ignore disturbing bulletins out of Japan on the troubles besetting its effort to fix its damaged nuclear facilities. Or, the recurring financial woes in Europe. Or, closer to home, the mercurial rise in food and gas prices that threatens to effectively wipe out the bounty awarded the consumer via a temporary tax cut.
