Cuttone and Co. Inc.

On this day 220 years ago, in a building one city block from where I currently sit, George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America. He took office during a period of great anxiety. The young republic was struggling to earn respect from the European powers and had just abandoned the divisive and ineffective Articles of Confederation that had been in place during the early days of independence.

As I walked past President Washington's statue on the steps of Federal Hall this morning, I found myself wondering how he felt that day as he gazed out over the

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To paraphrase Claude Raines as Captain Louis Renault in the classic film, "Casablanca":

‘I am shocked, shocked to discover that banks need capital here in America!!'

Despite the handwringing in the media, can anyone really be surprised to learn that Bank of America and Citibank are likely to require additional capital infusions? Hasn't that seemed like a probable result ever since the stress tests were first announced?  In any case, expect more unsettling leaks as the week progresses.

Many investors have built in a set of expectations that the tests will offer something in the way of finality

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Suddenly, everyone is talking about green shoots, glimmers and stress tests.

Normally, outside of the local garden club, green shoots don't garner much attention, but suddenly they are the overworked metaphor of choice for the punditocracy. Most commentators are afraid to call a false bottom and green shoots seem to be a way of hinting at a rebirth of economic activity in a way that lets you claim credit later in case the turnaround actually kicks in. Who can blame them? We're about to be informed that billions more in bank losses loom in the distance and as we have learned, where there are

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Like an unstoppable, hockey-masked killer in a cheap slasher movie, the banking crisis keeps coming back to frighten investors, turning yesterday into something like a scene from "A Nightmare On Wall Street".  Investors who, merely a week ago were beginning to breathe a little easier, gave into fear that mounting credit-related losses will cut deeply into financial sector profits and sent the S & P 500 plummeting 4.3%. IBM's sharp drop in revenue, announced after hours, merely twisted the knife and should lead to further bleeding when trading resumes this morning.

Corporations have lowered

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In pre-industrial times people were far more in tune with the natural world, mostly out of necessity. Farmers needed to know when to plant and navigators looked to the sky to chart their course. Weary travelers anxiously studied the night skies for signs of daylight so they could resume their journey. Occasionally in northern latitudes, people were fooled by "false dawn" a phenomena that occurred when zodiacal light slightly lifted the darkness in a way that resembled the first brightening of the sunrise. Many nights the morning seemed to take an eternity to arrive and a false dawn was

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 It appears that the consumer, given up for dead until recently, is stirring and Wall Street is noticing. Consumer discretionary stocks have been ringing up big gains of late amid a sense that the worst may be behind us. It is an old saw that we have no royalty in this country (except for Elvis. He is The King), but the consumer has ruled economically for decades. 
 
Now, I'm not saying that the spending habits of the halcyon days of yore (read: before two years ago) are returning, but it seems to me that there are millions upon millions of responsible, solvent folks who snapped shut their

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 It appears that the consumer, given up for dead until recently, is stirring and Wall Street is noticing. Consumer discretionary stocks have been ringing up big gains of late amid a sense that the worst may be behind us. It is an old saw that we have no royalty in this country (except for Elvis. He is The King), but the consumer has ruled economically for decades. 
 
Now, I'm not saying that the spending habits of the halcyon days of yore (read: before two years ago) are returning, but it seems to me that there are millions upon millions of responsible, solvent folks who snapped shut their

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As baseball prepares to return to our nation's newly greened stadiums, the stock market appears to be reacting to a rare triple play this morning. It may not exactly be Tinkers to Evers to Chance, but the combination of positive language coming out of the G-20 conference (with a likely half-point cut from the ECB), an expected relaxation of mark to market accounting rules by FASB here in the states and an ongoing series of encouraging economic reports has many investors believing that the world economic downturn has finally moved past the seventh inning stretch.
 
In advance of the G-20

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