The Big Picture - Macro Perspective on the Capital Markets, Economy, Technology, and Digital Media

While yesterday’s US stock market close was poor, Asia and Europe didn’t follow today as debt in Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc… rallied, their CDS narrowed and stocks bounced. The Greek finance minister said January tax revenues came in above expectations and that spending was below target for the month and said “that means the deficit reduction for January is well within what we have promised.” The euro is rising in turn. Also helping is the story that Trichet is headed to the European Union leaders summit a day early in order to address Greece’s problems even as the Greek finance minister said “the worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help.” The Jan NFIB small biz optimism index rose to 89.3 from 88 and is at the highest since Sept ’08 as most components were up. To compare historically though, the 30 yr average is 99.