Good News is Now on a Roll

Last week you saw a significant increase in coverage of good news. This week that trend continues.

In residential real estate, in macro models, in the halls of Washington, in earnings reports, and in labor news, there are significant new positive stories to highlight.

On Tuesday the National Association of Realtor's reported that pending home sales showed "Healthy Gains" in December.

In the macro market, Tuesday saw the "Fed's TED Spread" Model and chart reporting that yes the Recession will end in 2009.

Late Tuesday the reports inside the DC beltway, had lawmakers moving closer to a stimulus package that will likely pass with bipartisan support in both chambers.

Tuesday also brought Good News from Merck. The company announced surprisingly strong financial results. For Merck, net income for the fourth quarter of 2008 was $1.6B, compared with a net loss of $1.6B in the fourth quarter of 2007.

And the worlds largest telecommunications company AT&T, balanced layoffs vs aggressive hiring, by announcing that it has brought back in-house about 4,000 support center jobs, well on the way toward a goal of bringing back 5,000 jobs that had been outsourced overseas. Further evidence that despite the laundry list of layoffs in company press releases last week, vast numbers of job openings remain at Fortune 1000 firms including companies as diverse as Booz Allen Hamilton, Whole Foods Market, and the Mayo Clinic.

Stay tuned.