it depends on one's perspective of whether the US market has over-priced it's equities ahead of anticipated recovery
i think, the US economy has been recovering since start of 2009...but what is the definition of "recovery"? should it be :
a) unemployment rate?
b) corporate earnings?
c) trade account balance?
i think probably a combination of all of the above. however, i place more specific emphasis on "corporate earnings".... a trending healthy corp earnings represent the firms' ability to hire, consume and produce, all of which oils the engine of economic growth.
i agree that the official 9.7% unemployment rate is historically high figure...we have to go really far back to see this number repeated...even during the post dot.com days, unemployment was not above 7% at its worst.
however, has unemployment really dented the economic growth? or was this increasing number of unemployed, really trimming off the fats from the corporations?
i think, it is the case of letting deadwoods go that helped companies become more efficient and therefore became more productive that led to some improvement in their overall profit margins.
but that's not to be confused with revenue generation. if unemployment had a very significant effect on the revenue earnings of companies, then we should not have seen a continuous rise of corporate earnings and profits across almost all major institutions in the last 18 months...
what then is causing this uncertainty that these major corporations cannot continue on its path of earnings growth?
since nothing significant on the downside has occurred in the US continent over the last 18 months, this current jitters has got to be from the perceived threat from European continent.
so...now we must think and analyze how much of a negative impact the EZ will have on USA....
(too tiring writing this post
...now, your turn
)