Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Expect to See Upbeat Photos of the President this Week as He Hits the Road. The President is Shown Here in September 2014 with Elementary Students at a School at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 6, 2015
Yesterday was not an illustrious start to the first full week of the new year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 331 points on global deflation worries; U.S. crude oil dropped below $50 for the first time since 2009, with West Texas Intermediate touching $48.47 at one point on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note, whose yield is a harbinger of future economic activity, traded below 2 percent and is yielding 1.97 percent in early morning trade today.
In a strong signal that other economies are weakening around the globe, 10-year sovereign debt instruments in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands and the U.K. set record low yields yesterday.
Against that backdrop, columnist Paul Krugman might have wished he hadn’t penned these opening words on page A17 of the New York Times yesterday: “Suddenly, or so it seems, the U.S. economy is looking better. Things have been looking up for a while, but at this point the signs of improvement — job gains, rapidly growing G.D.P., rising public confidence — are unmistakable.”
The only thing unmistakable is that President Obama, Paul Krugman, and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen keep telling us things are looking up while the bellwethers of economic activity, yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note and 30-year U.S. Treasury bond are fading toward record lows, along with sovereign debt around the world.
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