It's time for the lightning round

Lots of stuff happened in the world recently, so strap in. I’m going to do my best to hit the lion’s share of them. I’ll do my best not to belabor any points.

Greece is apparently going to be bailed out of their deep debt crisis with the assistance of Germany. In repayment, all gyros from this day forward will now be made with bratwursts and served with beer.

We’ve managed to add jobs to the economy to the tune of about 162,000 according to the preliminary non-farm payrolls report on Good Friday. The unemployment rate held steady at 9.7%. Admittedly, we’d need to stack about 5-8 years of job growth like this to get back to where we were before the re­cession began, but you’ve gotta start somewhere. Yay America.

The stock market is flirting with 11,000 points on the Dow and the Fed has recently finished their di­rect bond purchasing program. This is a one-two punch to bond prices, which ultimately trickles down into higher interest rates at the consumer level. However, bonds have shown an exceptional resiliency (many investors are still choosing to purchase bonds over stocks) indicating that everyone’s kinda still nervous about this global economic recovery (they’re worried that stocks could still take a dive).

Obama went to Prague and signed a landmark treaty with Russia agreeing to reduce each of our re­spective nuclear inventories by approximately one-third. There’s a lot of politics surrounding this de­cision, but at the very least I think we can all agree that a world with fewer nukes is a good thing.

Unless aliens attack. Then we’ll be sorry.

China posted their first trade deficit in 6 years. Their economy is growing between 9-10% annually, so I am not thrillingly surprised that they are shifting into the role of another major consumer nation. Maybe now we can start manufacturing cheap knock-offs of their stuff and selling it back to them. Oh, sweet irony.

The rise in gas prices seems to have turned from a walk to a gallop. Some of that can be blamed on the weakness of the dollar as a result of our recent money printing bonanza; some of it can be attrib­uted to investors betting on a recovery and driving up demand in oil futures; some of it is higher de­mand at the consumer level. Regardless of the reason, let us not forget how crappy $4.00/gal gas is.

The first-time homebuyer’s tax credit in set to expire on April 30th. I’d love to give you the whole “act now!” spiel, but I have noticed that first time homebuyers don’t like to make massive life decisions in a hurried fashion. So, those of you who have contracts in, bravo for taking advantage of Uncle Sam’s offer. Those of you who are still house-hunting, the time is quickly approaching for you to make a decision. And for those of you who haven’t started yet but want to, I’d suggest you get on the phone with me right now because we don’t have a lot of time to spare.