Congress Rejects Extension of Unemployment Benefits seems Turd Polishing is a tough Job

There are lots of sayings on matters like what I am about to mention but right now I favor “YOU CAN’T POLISH A TURD”

Although the U.S. Congress MUST be the world champions of shining on, buffing and otherwise attempting to put a glow on turds of all makes and models, the one I mention here is the unemployment benefits currently at 99 weeks.  Here in the U. S,  after a person has exhausted his initial 26 weeks of unemployment from the State the Federal government picks up another 73 weeks of payments giving a worker 99 weeks to find work.  Those additional weeks and the extentions are the results of Congress’  first attempt to polish the turd that became the Real Estate crisis.  That’s a lot of weeks.  That’s almost two years to find work but where is the incentive when they keep extending it. 

Market analysis, QE2 and Pabst Blue Ribbon

Markets keep going up for (insert favorite reason here) as a general trend.  No trend, no matter how strong continues indefinitely without pauses, failures to correction etc.  We have not had a decent failure since back in August and are certainly due to correct a bit.  We paused with sideways moves in September, October and November with a burst of energy around the mid-term elections.  It’s hard for me to see what anyone would get excited about in an election which only promises (a.) more of the same or (b.) more of the same but with different idiots.  Nonetheless, it did produce the burst of excitement along with the let down which may and should give us a nice little correction.  It has been obvious that markets go down much faster than they recover and go up.  With this volatility this could be over quickly just as well as a nice correction futures traders can exploit to their advantage as long as your bias ( I always say traders should have no bias  ) remains correct in this counter trend move.