“Unjustified Euphoria”

James Surowiecki is somewhat puzzled by his fellow econo-pundits:

I would argue that there are good reasons to believe that the economy, while still very weak, is much closer to a bottom than it was two months ago, and that the Obama Administration’s management of the crisiswhich we could only guess at in Januaryhas been a net plus for the economy (and therefore for the stock market). Yet despite all this, the simple fact is that the stock market has not gone up since February. In fact, for all its ups and downs, after four months of action it’s ended up pretty much where it started. It’s a strange world, indeed, in which that counts as euphoria.