Lawrence Summers, Presidential-Economic-Advisor-In-Chief, delivered a speech at the Brookings Institution this morning to highlight the Administration’s efforts in dealing with the crisis and to give his assessment of the economic situation. Interestingly, he said that adjusted for inflation the Dow was trading at the same level earlier this week as in 1966. If you don’t remember, 1966 was the year when typewriters were used for… well, typing; young people could safely hitchhike from Jersey to San Francisco where they could attend psychedelic parties and talk about whether the Beatles were really more popular than Jesus. All of this is to say, that 1966 was before the computers and the internet, both of which now save us from having to physically travel anywhere or talk to anyone in person, since we can do all of that virtually. Somehow the Dow Jones went all the way back to THOSE TIMES. Lawrence Summers was strongly implying that now is a good time to buy stock, since the stock market having now fallen to the 1966-level, is obviously undervalued. But the markets started to drop in late morning trading again, after the three days of gains. Apparently the investors are worried about the credit card debt now. (Another thing we didn’t have in 1966) Discover and Capital One stocks fell. Maybe, the markets’ jubilation over the no-so-bad retail sales data is cooling off, because (wait a minute!) the U.S. consumers might still be using their credit cards to shop (gasp!) Chinese Primier, Wen Jaibao has made it to every major newspaper in the world today, voicing his worry over the U.S. economy, and chastising the U.S. for economic mismanagement. Can we dial back a little bit? Where would the Chinese economy be if the U.S. consumers weren’t buying all the stuff that China makes? Certainly nowhere near the position it holds now, as the largest holder of the U.S. Treasury bonds. China wouldn’t have the money to buy those investments, had the U.S. consumers not handed that money over to China. So, don’t worry Mr. Wen, the U.S. is still buying much more from China than China buys from us, to the tune of $20.6 billion, as the latest trade deficit figures show. (And the U.S. is still the largest economy in the world, so China's Treasury bonds should be OK, for now, too).