Wall Street Had "Best Quarter In Years"

The NY Times prefaces details about the second quarter of 2009 with this: "The good news is that Wall Street finished its best quarter in years on Tuesday — part of a dizzy spree that lifted the broad market 35 percent since early March. The not-so-good news? It would take almost three more rallies like that to push the Dow Jones industrial average back to 14,000 and return markets to where they were before the financial crisis." One analyst tells the Wall Street Journal, "The banks are making money the old-fashioned way, by making markets," but adds, "The pace is just not sustainable." So what's ahead? Some warn that the better returns may not be in the offing, because much of the system is bolstered by taxpayer aid; another analyst says the market will fall and rise within a certain range for a while, "Is the market still investable? Our answer is yes." In other news, ADP says that 473,000 jobs were cut in June; the number if higher than expected, which suggests "the labor market will be slow to improve even as other parts of the economy indicate the recession is abating."