Tesar-Reynes

It was truly a wonderful week last week.  All of the words from the Obama administration were nice to hear but the proof of the pudding was in the Dow Jones numbers.  It went up Tuesday.  It went up Wednesday.  It went up Thursday.  And it even stayed up on Friday.

On Friday afternoon, when there was not a large selloff, I saw a lot of smiling faces as I walked around Chicago. It seemed that all of us were losing the battle against the constant bombardment of bad news; here was a non verbal positive statistic. Now I know that all the pundits are saying that this rally is probably only temporary.  But it’s the first piece of really solid news that we have seen in months.  It’s a little bit like giving a drowning person some pure oxygen.

I certainly know that it has colored my mentality for the week.  I got up Saturday morning and broke out a photographer’s lightbox, which I have never used before, and started shooting images of some blooming orchids we have around the house.  This positive mentality got me out of my winter rut and out of the funk.  I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m naturally a positive person.  And I really appreciate all the help I can get.

I think we as a nation are basically impatient and positive in our outlook.  I suspect that this is both a strength and weakness.  I seem to remember some historian writing that Americans win wars but don’t do well at the peace table….something about a lack of long term discipline.  I suspect that our rosy view and short memory may cause a lack of realism.  But on the other side of the coin, I think these same qualities give us a resiliency, which allows us to bounce back from tough times.

If this market turn signals the beginning of our climb out of this recession, I wonder what we will learn and remember.  Will some of the values that the citizens of the Great Depression learned be reanimated on us?  Where will the value point fall between savings and consumption?  I suspect that this is going to be one of the major questions that we have to figure out in the near future.  Both are needed for our continued growth.