Tune into the financial media and you’re guaranteed to hear an “expert” call the stock market’s bottom at least once a day.

The U.S. market peaked in October 2007. Of the dozens of predictions I’ve read, the consensus is that the economy will turn around in the second half of the year. The market, as a forward-looking mechanism, should rebound 1-2 quarters prior.

The Congressional Budget Office’s announcement Wednesday that 2009’s budget deficit was going to be $1.19 trillion – before a nickel of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan has been included – raises a crucial question for the U.S. economy: Is there too much stimulus, and what effect would too much stimulus have?

Foreign buyers exited the market for U.S. dollar-denominated debt and securities when the credit crisis surfaced in August of 2007. And their return since is proving to be somewhat tentative, as revealed in the latest U.S. Treasury International Capital (TIC) report on capital flows. In July 2008, foreigners once again fled the scene, and were net sellers in U.S. capital markets to the tune of $25.6 billion.

CNN has made some wonderfully optimistic stock market predictions today.

Of course, upbeat stock market predictions is what CNN and the rest of the mainstream financial press are all about — making Americans feel that all is well in the world, that the stock market and the US economy are ultimately benign forces, always and forever about to pick up.

Oddly, given some of the more pessimistic and, dare we say it, more informed predictions about the state of the US economy, CNN’s has made every effort to put a positive spin on its market predictions

Back in December, my friend Steve Sjuggerud described a British spending spree taking place in America. At the time, the pound was worth about $1.95, and Brits were enjoying a 50% discount on their Christmas shopping across the pond.

The broad market tone is mildly optimistic as another week comes to a close. The Dow, the S&P, and the Nasdaq 100 have all broken above clear resistance levels; the Dow having done so more convincingly than the S&P, with the Nasdaq’s breakout the strongest of the three.

Nothing in life is perfect. In fact, to write such a sentence means most of my life must be pretty darned all right. After a too long and too snowy winter, I am, today sitting on the back porch with laptop in lap. Yeah, the WIFI signal just barely makes it out to here… the G5 in my office is hardwired to the Internet so it’s blazingly faster.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not earning much interest at the bank these days. Fortunately, an extraordinary “return-on-your-cash” alternative has come up in the last month.

When your whole world is falling apart, there are always government bonds. Not that the world is falling apart. But neither does it seem to be holding together very well.