On Saturday, February 2nd, Groundhog Day, Staten Island Chuck did not spot his shadow at the Staten Island Zoo. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided to pass on this event, leaving City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who will campaign for the Mayor's job when his third term comes to end, to represent the city. Staten Island Chuck has been notorious for biting Mayor Bloomberg in 2009, so this is one annual event he does not always attend. Mayor Bloomberg will be missed by most of us when his third term expires, perhaps even by Staten Island Chuck.
Chuck's counterpart to the west, Punxsutawney Phil, also did not see his shadow, so the consensus is for an early spring. Winter, though, was not quick to exit and on Friday, February 8th and Saturday, February 9th those of us in the Northeast had our largest snowstorm in several years, with accumulations in northeast Connecticut, parts of Long Island, and eastern Massachusetts reaching two and a half to three feet of snow.
Mary Claire and I decided that mid-February would be a good time to head west and look for spring in the Bay Area, after watching the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am while still on the East Coast. Brandt Snedeker finished at 19 under to win, against the glorious backdrop of Pebble Beach.
We found signs of spring when we arrived home this weekend, with many trees starting to bloom, which leads me to believe that Staten Island Chuck and Punxsutawney Phil will be accurate once again.
With the U.S. fall election behind us, a fair amount of uncertainty remains around the strength of the recovery and the ongoing fiscal battles between President Obama and the House Republicans on the right fiscal balance that will get GDP growing at a faster pace than 2%. The stock market, though, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hovering around 14,000, has given rise to optimism that 2013 can be the first true year of significant growth since the Crisis. I do not want to suggest, though, that the DJIA is a better forecaster than our two groundhogs!
On Saturday, we will leave for a week in London, where there are also signs of spring. The Eurozone debt crisis is not looming as large as it was last year and there is little discussion of the Euro disappearing. We also have seen on February 8th a story in the Financial Times, "Cameron emerges EU budget talks victor," by Joshua Chaffin and Quentin Peel: "When the deal was finally agreed - after more than 25 hours of frenzied bargaining - Mr. Cameron emerged the principal victor in a 1,000bn Euro contest that had played out in the corridors of Brussels and Europe's other capitals for more than 18 months. Above all, he can claim to have won the first-ever reduction in EU spending - a trophy for a British Conservative premier - while defending the sacrosanct UK budget rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher when she was prime minister at a French-chaired summit in Fontainebleau in 1984...It is unlikely he would have succeeded without the intervention of Ms. Merkel, who emerged as the broker in the talks and also won almost precisely the budget deal she wanted by throwing her weight behind the British premier rather than behind Mr. Hollande, her traditional ally."
Let's hope that some of the drama of last year's spring, including the Arab Spring, which has lead to the Syrian Winter, will give way to some real progress on issues that have previously seemed intractable.