CHESSNOID

The markets closed down today but that was expected.  We have gained about 20% in 3 weeks based on news from banks claiming they are now profitable.  The same banks that claimed they had the subprime debacle under control 2 years ago.  I predict those banks that claim they were profitable the first 2 months after taking bailout money will be back asking for more bailout money. ??? That will be suspicious considering they are making “profits”.

.Is the stock market bottom here?  It could be, but it probably is not.  I personally missed the rewards of this rally, but I am not a believer that this is the bottom.  Our economy has not improved even though the stock market has.  What I mean by that is unemployment is still shooting up.  The report that came out today is 49 out of 50 states have higher unemployment and a few more are now over 10%. Yikes!

Forbes:

…Currently 5.56 million people are drawing state unemployment insurance, the highest on records dating back to 1967 the federal government reported Thursday. The crush has exhausted unemployment funds in California, New York and elsewhere, forcing them to tap the federal government for money to keep paying benefits.

Rising unemployment means lost revenue for already squeezed states.

All told, Friday’s report found that 49 states and the District of Columbia saw their unemployment rates move higher in February from the previous month. Only Nebraska recorded a slight drop. Its jobless rate dipped to 4.2 percent.

The other issue that goes hand in hand with the unemployment is the housing bust. The cause of the problems still has not been addressed. The government is still trying to bail out Wall Street by giving them trillions of dollars at the taxpayer’s expense which does nothing to help the economy. NOTHING!
Foreclosures still shot up even with the moratoriums in place right now by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and major banks. To me that indicates there are many more foreclosures than what the reports actually indicate. The state of our economy is in worse shape than any of us can imagine.

The Street:

Foreclosure activity in the U.S. increased once again in February, rising nearly 30% from a year ago, despite a moratorium on foreclosures by many financial firms, according to a research group.
RealtyTrac, an Internet marketplace for foreclosure properties, said that foreclosures rose 6% last month to 290,631 U.S. properties, marking the third-highest monthly total in the report’s history.

Nevada, Arizona and California sported the top state foreclosure rates. Nevada saw a 9% increase from the previous month and a 156% increase from a year ago, with one in every 70 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing last month. Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Oregon and Ohio rounded out the top 10.

Meanwhile, California led the nation with the highest foreclosure totals at 80,775 in February, the most of any state, followed by Florida and Arizona. Nevada, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Georgia and Virginia also reported foreclosure totals that were among the nation’s 10 highest.

The magnitude of the increase came as a bit of a surprise as several lenders, including Citigroup (C Quote – Cramer on C – Stock Picks), JPMorgan Chase (JPM Quote – Cramer on JPM – Stock Picks) and Bank of America (BAC Quote – Cramer on BAC – Stock Picks), said last month that they would temporarily halt new foreclosures on mortgages they hold until the Obama administration finalized a plan.

“The increase in foreclosure activity from January to February is somewhat surprising, given that many of the foreclosure prevention efforts and moratoria in place in January were extended through most of February as well,” said James Saccacio, CEO of RealtyTrac.

Bernanke thinks the recession will end this year. This financial stooge and an expert on the Great Depression didn’t even know we were in a recession until a year later!  He didn’t even think there was a housing bubble.  LA Times:

In carefully hedged remarks in a taped interview with CBS’ ” 60 Minutes,” Bernanke seemed to express a bit more optimism that this could be done.

Still, Bernanke stressed — as he did to Congress last month — that the prospects for the recession ending this year and a recovery taking root next year hinge on a difficult task: getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally.

“We’ve seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely,” Bernanke said. “But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we’re not going to see recovery.

“But we do have a plan. We’re working on it. And, I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we’ll see the recession coming to an end probably this year.”

Bernanke says no recession!