Optimism comes cheap, during the great recession

What's better than bad news? "Less bad" news, of course

Published July 30, 2009 2:03PM (EDT)

Quote of the morning, accompanying a report on an early surge in stock prices:

From Bloomberg:

"This phase of the bad news getting less bad is continuing to be sustained. There's a lot of hope and optimism that's being built in." -- Marc Harris, co-head of global research at RBC Capital Markets in New York.

Meanwhile, Sony's quarterly earnings swung to a loss, Exxon profits were down 65 percent from a year earlier, and weekly jobless claims jumped for the second straight week (although the overall trend is still down.)

But really, the bad news is less bad than it was. Tomorrow's initial report on second quarter GDP growth will likely be nowhere near as disastrous as the previous two quarters. So, party on!


By Andrew Leonard

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21.

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Great Recession How The World Works Unemployment