“Well don’t expect me to cheer the stock market as long as this economy doesn’t have a job for me.”
The Dow broke 16K BECAUSE there are no American jobs in it; the best way for a company to drive up its stock is to lay off American workers, and when everything is priced in inflated dollars the number itself becomes meaningless.
Asians are celebrating this; they have the workers and increasingly, the shareholders. Companies listed on our stock exchanges aren’t American companies; they are international companies, initially selling products made here overseas, now selling products made overseas all over the world. When the two largest countries in the world have over a billion people each (nearly a third of the global population), countries like ours are miniscule in a consumer-driven economy; this becomes especially pronounced when we no longer have anything to buy anything (since we don’t have worthwhile jobs which afford us discretionary income)
When I was a young man, they built big buildings called factories, filled them with machines, and manufactured stuff.
When I was middle aged, they built big buildings called warehouses, and filled them with goods from overseas.
Now that I’m old, they don’t even build buildings.