Quote from pitz:
Look guys -- diss Bernanke all you want, but without a stock market revival, there can't be an employment revival.
Business owners need to see a return on their investments. Because, right now, they are friggin *broke*, and haven't seen a dime of return from their businesses for at least the past decade -- even longer, if you take inflation into account.
I don't know how many of you have run businesses yourselves -- but if you're losing money, if you're not seeing personal gains through your ownership interest in the business -- you're not going to go run out and create more employment. You're not going to spend on new machinery. You're not going to engage in a lot of R&D.
If the Dow goes to 40k, there will be a new crop of millionaires sprouted from that -- and those people will be in the position to take their winnings, and start businesses, create employment. Listed firms will be able to sell stock into the market and use that to grow their balance sheets.
Just look at the past couple of decades -- most businesses were started by people HELOC'ing the sh*t out of their houses, and 'investing'. The paradigm is changing folks, now people will be margining the sh*t out of their stocks instead.
And it will take far more dramatic moves in the stock market to re-flate the economy, than housing, because stock ownership is much less prevalent. How many Americans own stock? Very few. With the way the housing market is right now -- heck, over half of the adult population probably has negative net worth.