If you listen to company prognostications, they rarely have anything positive to say about prospects for the remainder of the year. (No suprsise -- saying there's still "excess capacity" is being kind.)
Hopes for a second half revival are basically just that -- hope. Based, it seems, on little else than that the economy has been been sputtering along for a while now, the stock market has been heading down for three years now, and that, well, it just "seems" long enough.
That's pretty weak.
Yes, I hear all the market climbs a wall of worry stories, but there's also a danger in clinging to past phenomena like that. Is this time really so similar to 1982 (BIG concerns back then too)? I'm not so sure it is. They didn't have the multi-year Fed engineered (in essence) bubble that had recently burst.
I'll have to check, but what were debt levels entering the 80s? I'd bet they weren't anywhere near today's.
My view is that America is a sneeze away from a double dip.
I hope I'm wrong, I really do, but I'm playing it negative until given reason to believe otherwise.