What I can't understand in all the discussions of the state of the economy, even discounting political rhetoric, is why no one focuses on the leading market indexes or indices as being historically flat for the past five years. 11000 on the Dow was reached five years ago or so and we're still dangling around that number. Even though a market index is merely an adjusted representation of the health of a selected number of stocks and the index components change, there is still a psychological effect on the market that is very real. If not a trigger for market movement up or down than why do we obsess about its value so much?

I contend that we never surfaced from the last economic dive and are floundering to find a true course and as such will probably continue to wandeer aimlessly until resolution on some matters is sufficient to cause some serious sustained economic growth.

Both prices seem to be driven largely by world economic growth.