Tintinnabulation

As the stock market’s opening bell rings this morning, everyone’s waiting for one thing: The closing bell.

At the end of the day, all that matters is the end of the day.

The market has become an end in itself, investors and everyone else having somewhere along the way forgotten that the market is supposed to be a mere indicator. In this brave new world of mile-a-minute, good-for-nothing economics, every single day represents a fresh financial start and finish.

The market’s no longer the means – the metric – but the end. Or possibly it is both the means and the end, incestuously indicating itself according to itself.

The Dow “soars” a few hundred points? Recovery is underway! We can see clearly now, and it’s a “bright sunshiny day.”

But if the next day the Dow “plummets” a few hundred points? Bad news bears! Continueth “the worst recession since the Great Depression.”

Never mind that the market’s day-to-day fluctuations portend absolutely nothing substantive about the nation’s economic situation. It’s kind of similar to the idea that anecdotes prove nothing: Micro does not macro make – even if everyone pretends there’s no difference between the two.

Up or down, today’s Dow Jones finish will be credited to – or chalked up to – Barack Obama’s prime time press conference. No matter that he didn’t say anything new or different or even very important.

What matters is that he spoke, not what he spoke.

People – investor-people, prognosticator-people, people-people – lust after “action.” Americans want something to talk about. Even though they don’t understand any of it (what’s a toxic asset?) they still want to talk about it.

And so the market, with its reliable workaday openings and closings, gives them something to talk about.

Bite-size chunks – day-at-a-time financial servings – are about all people can handle, anyway. To think that there’s residue, leftovers . . . well, that’s just too messy. It’s much simpler to take it a day at a time.

How many hours until the closing bell?