' The rich get richer' gleamed true this week.

Wall Street is doing fine this year @ 14,000 greed is
still the norm .

The phrase ' The rich get richer' gleamed true this week .If you look at the 2008 election... what swung Obama... what gave him the election was primarily financial institutions contributions - they preferred him to McCain. They expected to be paid back, and they were. And the next one will be even worse... Noam Chomsky said. The "fiscal cliff" compromise, even with all its chaos, controversy and unresolved questions, was enough to ignite the stock market on Wednesday, the first trading day of the new year.The Dow Jones industrial average careened more than 300 points higher, its biggest gain since December 2011. It's now just 5 percent below its record high close reached in October 2007. The Russell 2000, an index that tracks smaller companies, shot up to 873.42, the highest close in its history.When it comes to big, round numbers with major investment significance, 14,000 is as big as it gets for the Dow Jones industrial average.Higher tax rates on the rich Obviously the market is saying this is bad for industry. Well, maybe it will some day in the future.  Meanwhile, let's just sit back and ride it.So, seeing as the stock market has managed to reach record highs and the income of the richest 1% of the 1% is at all time highs, having grown by double digit percentages every year for years now, at the same time that huge numbers of ordinary Americans are still economically suffering, may we look forward to the complete and total denunciation of the insanity called "supply side economics" since it obviously doesn't work?The stock market is more a representation of how traders are feeling about the economy than the economy's underlying fundamentals. And many investors don't even think the Dow is the best way to track the market: They prefer the much bigger Standard & Poor's benchmark index, which follows 500 companies, because they think it represents a more accurate view of the economy.The last time the Dow was at 14000, gold was at $750. Now gold is at $1700 because of Federal Reserve inflationary monetary policies. For the Dow to have a comparable increase in valuation, it would need to be at over 33000. So why is everyone excited about 14000. It is still in the toilet compared to its all time high. Simple economics but the sheep will believe everything the media tells them.The supposed victimization of America's financial elite in the last few years has been almost entirely self-imagined. Sure, the Occupy movement sparked a national conversation about income inequality and spooked rich people into putting extra deadbolts on their beach houses. Sure, the one percent had been attacked in the media and targeted by politicians, including Obama, who wanted to raise their taxes.But besides hurt feelings and vague threats, the actual political and financial damage done to the Wall Street elite during Obama's first term was approximately nil. On the contrary, banker bonuses remained high, the Dow Jones Industrial Average nearly doubled, and corporations saw their profits grow an astounding 77.9 percent a year. Obama continued the Bush-era bailout plans for big banks, and rich people were still the beneficiaries of a friendly tax code, thanks in part to a carried-interest loophole that Obama never got around to rolling back. Their grip on the legislative branch was still strong, thanks to an army of paid lobbyists who were chipping away at Dodd-Frank and other regulation on Capitol Hill. No doubt despite popular perception Odummy and the Dems spend more time on their knees servicing Wall Street than anyone. The market could really take off if the economy would actually recover given all the money being held on the sidelines and overseas that may be tempted back in in such a scenario. Looks kind of like the 1930's somewhat with dopey gummint policies locking in an economic downturn and the dummies thinking that's ok because they have "programs" "helping" them. .

But we should be in an upswing in the business cycle now especially with cheap energy. This occurs in spite of policy of course. They may kill the Golden Goose of the American economy but haven't quite managed it yet.