According to a gauge derived from data compiled by The American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), bullishness on U.S. stocks is beginning to emerge after the market’s rally in the past year.
The latest AAII Sentiment Survey reading shows optimists outweighed pessimists for the first time since January 2008, three months after the previous bull market ended. (See Chart from Bloomberg)
A Disparity in Sentiment
In contrast to the cheery mood of the markets, the latest readings from consumers and small business owners indicate economic sentiment isn’t improving, despite signs of a factory rebound and less gloom on the labor front.
The National Federation of Independent Business said its optimism index for small business owners fell back in February to its December reading. The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index dropped 3% in March, well below its average of the past year.
Meanwhile, The U.S. consumer sentiment also dipped in early March, according to the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index.
Splitting the Sky, indigenous activist, seized by security forces in Canada last year when he attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of George W. Bush will have his day in court on Monday, March 8th. According to Professor Anthony J. Hall, this case will demonstrate whether Canada is ruled by law or fear and highlight the need for new principles, the Calgary Principles to amend the victor’s justice of the Nuremberg Principles, in light of the new impunities for high level crimes against humanity and the Earth in this era, and the need to protect and honor civil resistance to those high crimes.
Dacajaweiah, John Boncore, or Splitting the Sky, is not a man of few words. If you read his hefty 653-page autobiography, it is very clear that he has lived an extraordinary life and has survived more than his share of violence, to find deep within himself a well of energy and spirit enabling him to not only endure hardships, but to serve his people and the land in the timeless struggle against oppression and tyranny. From the Attica Rebellion to Gustafen Lake to Calgary in 2009, when he attempted a citizen’s arrest of George W. Bush, “Dac” has consciously taken a leadership role to politically challenge the powerful forces that dominate the North American continent. Brutally arrested for his action, he earned his “day in court” to voice not only his defense, but “to highlight the hypocrisy and criminality of the Canadian government for allowing Bush into Canada, and to firmly establish the legal defense of ‘civil resistance’, the duty of citizens to act when our governments and their agents are derelict in their duty. This will be very useful in the future to rein these criminals in.”
Prior to Bush’s visit, the Canadian group Lawyers Against the War asked Canadian officials to bar entry or try Bush for his suspected crimes since Canadian Law prohibits “people suspected of any involvement in torture or other war crimes and crimes against humanity from entering Canada for any period and for any purpose. The most recent report of the War Crimes Program affirms the necessity of barring war crimes suspects from Canada: ‘The most effective way to deny safe haven to people involved or complicit in war crimes or crimes against humanity is to prevent them from coming to Canada.’”
SAN FRANCISCO–Homeland Security and the National Security Agency may be taking a closer look at Internet communications in the future.
The Department of Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity official told CNET on Wednesday that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector. The technology was created for federal networks.
Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said in an interview that the department is evaluating whether Einstein “makes sense for expansion to critical infrastructure spaces” over time.
Not much is known about how Einstein works, and the House Intelligence Committee once charged that descriptions were overly “vague” because of “excessive classification.” The White House did confirm this week that the latest version, called Einstein 3, involves attempting to thwart in-progress cyberattacks by sharing information with the National Security Agency.
Dear Canada. Way to go, you hosers. Did yourself proud and put on one heck of an Olympics. Congratulations for providing an incredible 17 days of thrills and spills on the ice and snow and in the slush and fog. That was a winter games for the ages, except for that excruciatingly obvious lack of winter thing. As it turns out, Washington, D.C. might have been a better host city, but who knew? Although, a quick call to Al Gore might have been worth the international toll-call charges.
May I also offer up a big old heaping pile of thanks for keeping Celine Dion out of the Opening Ceremonies. I’m sure it was under the direction of Prime Minister Harper, counseled by a group of high-powered Ottawa lawyers to comply with certain articles of the Geneva Convention, but still, please accept the grateful indebtedness of an entire planet. Then again, no Neil Young? I think you missed a slam-dunk there, eh?
And good on you for winning the most golds. You may not have owned the whole podium but you certainly did hog that center platform, didn’t you? You really deserve to go out and celebrate. Use a pocket full of loonies and buy yourself some extra gravy to pour over your poutine.
On March 5–the day after being sworn into office–Roosevelt stepped into the breach and declared a “bank holiday,” which, for four days forced the closure of the nation’s banks and halted all financial transactions. The “holiday” not only helped stem the frantic run on banks, but gave Roosevelt time to push the Emergency Banking Act through the legislative chain. Passed by Congress on March 9, the act handed the president a far-reaching grip over bank dealings and “foreign transactions.” The legislation also paved the path for solvent banks to resume business as early as March 10. Three short days later nearly 1,000 banks were up and running again.
You’ve seen “ER” and I’ve seen “ER” and I think we can both agree that if bipartisan health care reform were a patient, Doctor Obama would be dejectedly dropping the paddles, ripping off his mask and asking Nurse Pelosi to call it.
Oh, yeah. It’s finished. Done with. Kaput. Defunct. Deceased. Extinct. Artifacto. Fuggedaboutit. Game over, man. Part of the vast past tense. Washed up. Down the drain. Sleeping with the fishies. Sheer finito. Totally obliterated. See ya. Wouldn’t want to be ya. Pushing up daisies. Eaten by the undertoad. Down Goes Frazier! Rests in peace. Bereft of life. Shuffled off its mortal coil. Crossed the distant shore. Run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. Stick a fork in it. It’s history. A memory. In the archives. Way gone. Say bye. Then again… you never know. Reconciliation. Such an innocent word.
With the deftness of Houdini, the president conjured up a seance where Democrats and Republicans sat down together and aired out differences like actual humans, and while the festivities conspicuously lacked any hand-holding choruses of “Kumbaya,” the two sides did refrain from physically throttling each other and nobody staggered out in full view of the cameras cradling a bloody stump. Which, for these guys, is a leap. They did, however, continue to lock out ordinary Americans by talking in a special Congressional code known as Politico-Speak. And I’m here to decipher.
When you leave the country for good you take a part of it with you forever.
I play the march named that way every day although it is not for the CD. It is a railway march and it needs an orchestra in the open air. The old country was a railway country. The first sound I remember as a child was a train whistle. Nobody played that march at the station on the day of our departure and there were no crying women or soldiers waving hands through the doors. The evening was cold and we were standing under the shadow of the overpass in a frozen silence. The mist crawled from beneath a train, red and black from the sparks and coal- fed heaters of the carriages. It enveloped us, took us in and pushed us towards the river as if not just the train but the whole platform was on the way to the great bridge, the only one leading to the capital, to the airport, to the gate abroad, out, away forever.
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