The Markets
"We don't think the world has ended."

With so much doom and gloom being published these days, it's refreshing to hear a respected leader of a global, blue-chip company make a positive statement. Doug Oberhelman, the chief executive officer of Caterpillar, met with analysts last week and painted a rather bright picture of the world economy, including the quote above.

The Markets

One week, the glass is half full, the next week, it is half empty.

Investor's lack of conviction was on full display last week as a scandal at Hewlett Packard, a change of heart from the Fed, a revenue miss from tech bellwether Cisco Systems, and an unexpected rise in weekly jobless claims led to a decline in global stock markets, according to Bloomberg.

In particular, the Federal Open Market Committee last week slightly changed its economic outlook by saying, "The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated." To help the economy maintain momentum, the Fed announced that it will goose the economy a bit by reinvesting the principal payments it receives on its agency securities in longer-term Treasury securities and that it will roll over its maturing holdings of Treasury securities in new Treasury securities. Effectively, this means the Fed will not shrink its balance sheet for the time being.