The Dow is up, but not as much as it went down

Wall Street has become euphoric and the stock market is going up again. Has recovery arrived?

No. It hasn't.

Here's Robert Reich explaining what has really happened.

What's pushing the stock market upward? Mainly, unexpectedly positive second-quarter corporate profits. But those profits aren't being powered by consumers who have suddenly found themselves with a lot more money in their pockets. The profits are coming from dramatic cost-cutting -- including, most notably, payroll cuts. If a firm cuts its costs enough, it can show a profit even if its sales are still in the basement.

The problem here is twofold. First, such profits can't be maintained. There's a limit to how much can be cut without a business eventually disappearing -- becoming, in effect, a balance sheet in space. Secondly, when businesses slash payrolls to show profits, consumers end up with even less money in their pockets to buy the things businesses produce. Even if they hold on to their jobs, they're likely to fear that they won't have the jobs for long, which causes them to retreat even further from the malls.

Most companies that have reported earnings so far have surpassed analyst's estimates, but that only means that earnings have been less bad than analysts had feared. According to the chief investment officer at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, if the companies that haven't yet reported earnings show the same pattern a the companies that have reported so far, overall corporate earnings will have dropped 25 percent over the past year. That may not be as much of a drop as analysts had expected, but it's still awful. Operating income for companies in the S&P 500 that have reported so far has been almost 29 percent lower than last year, more than 80 percent lower than 2007, according to Standard and Poors. Ouch.

That's what I wrote yesterday. The only thing that is keeping the economy from it's steep dive into Depression is the federal government stimulus. The economy itself is not yet moving into recovery. The recent profits reported by the banks and some businesses are a chimera, reflection only the government efforts to keep interest rates low, add money to the economy and try to kick start employment by funding the building of infrastructure projects.