Two weeks have passed since I posted Is the stock market spring loaded? Could it move 3,000 points higher now? and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed about 750 points finishing yesterday at 7660. That is after a day in which it went down 116 points giving up some of Mondays gains.

There is an old adage on Wall Street that simply states, "Don't fight the Fed". It is has been referred to and commented on for years and we are seeing it in action again. We saw it last week when Ben Bernanke the Federal Reserve Chairman was going to speak and some wondered what he might be able to do to help the ailing economy, since the adage, in general, refers to interest rate movement.

In one of my previous blogs: Is the stock market spring loaded? I coined the phrase Lightspeed Inflation in reference to the rate at which the government was able to dilute our currency. It is time we stopped referring to the government's over spending as "running the printing presses".

We have reached a point, given our maximum note size of $100, that we would actually be better off if the government did have to print the money. Now they can just add whatever amount they want to the balance sheet electronically.

The economic firestorm that we are in the midst of is yet to be contained, or for that matter, completely understood.

Some things are very clear like the fact we spent more than we earned, as individuals and as a nation, for decades on end. That we know for sure, and regardless of who we blame the most for this situation there is no bigger economic mistake one can make.

This is something that I harp on often, and I expect I will keep on doing so because I do not have any reason to believe things will change; see: Ignore Washington -- keep saving; General Patton makes a point.

Since Obama's inauguration, the market seems to have responded negatively to the president's rhetoric, and yesterday was no exception. Within seconds of a White House alert that the president and his chief economic advisers would make an important announcement, stocks headed south.

And by the time that President Obama -- flanked by his team -- began the address at 3:50 p.m. Eastern, the Dow had given up more than 100 points, with investors fearful that the team had decided on a major policy shift.

Despite the poor timing of the White House's news conference, which contained little new information and spooked traders into a flurry of profit-taking, Wednesday's small correction did little to change Tuesday's upside reversal and the probability of further buying.

President Obama is now searching for a third candidate to fill the Commerce Secretary position now that Senator Judd Gregg has withdrawn his name from consideration for the position. Scouring the Intrawebs, it seems that the word that most people are using for this rebuff is "embarrassment." While I am a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, I don't know if I would go as far as saying this is an embarrassment - the President tried to reach across party lines and got bit. In fact (and I am watching out for lightning here), Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel hit the nail on the head when he said, "It's better we discovered it now than later ... If I said it wasn't a disappointment, that would lack credibility."

President Obama is starting to flex his leadership muscles and spend his hard-won political capital.

In remarks before House Democrats in Virginia Thursday night that sounded more like one of his successful campaign speeches that energized millions, Obama argued that the nation's economic well being requires swift approval of the roughly $900 billion fiscal stimulus package.

Can President Obama force CEOs to take a massive pay cut? While many others in the economy -- particularly the millions of regular Joes and Janes who have lost their jobs -- are helping to push down wages, CEOs have been immune from the pay cuts. But if Obama forces CEOs who take government money to limit their pay to $500,000 -- 25% more than Obama takes in -- will that cause all CEO pay to tumble? I think the answer is "no."

Why? Many reasons. First, no CEO in his or her right mind would volunteer to take government money given the ensuing pay cut. For example, if the CEO of a car company made $14 million in 2008, why would that same CEO volunteer to make $500,000 in 2009? Instead, the CEO would seek a position with a company that did not take government money and therefore did not limit the CEO's pay.

Gotta love it when the worlds of sports and politics combine ... I mean at least our founding fathers had enough sense to try and separate church and state, right? Perhaps this news isn't that big of a deal, but I thought it funny that we now have the Chicago White Sox releasing a special Barack Obama hat.

That's right, the Chicago White Sox are fashioning a new hat based on their top fan in chief, President Obama. The Sox (not to be confused with the Sawx, don't bother me Boston fans) are going to release two special edition hats with Obama tributes on the back and the side of the cap.

President Obama (it's going to take a while to get used to typing and saying that), shared a word with former President Bill Clinton after Tuesday's historic inauguration.

Further, anyone who knows 'The Comeback Kid' knows that he often likes to share a quick joke upon meeting. Perhaps Clinton whispered something like this to Obama:

"Mr. Obama, congratulations. You are now president of these U-nited States, yes you are," Clinton perhaps said. "Now here's the bad news. You are now president of these U-nited States, yes you are."

Time to tackle only three issues in 2009

Few deny that the nation faces a veritable smorgasbord of challenges in the years ahead. What should the Obama administration prioritize in 2009?

Obviously, the fiscal stimulus package is first, at least $700 billion and preferably more than $1 trillion in size, comprised of useful, value-adding infrastructure programs, assistance to the states, unemployment insurance extension, and tax cuts aimed at encouraging investment and business expansion, among other measures.

Last Friday, the big economic news was the shocking loss of 533,000 jobs which spurred President Bush to accept this weekend a bailout plan for the automobile industry likely to be announced in the week ahead. So did stocks crash on Friday as a result of the bad jobs news? No -- the Dow rose 259 points. And despite the daily failure of the stock market to fit the simple storyline that stocks go down with bad news and up with good, this media mental model persists.

In the week ahead, there is likely to be more bad news. Here are three such items:

• Spiking unemployment filings. On Thursday, first time unemployment filings are likely to top 500,000 for the fourth straight week.
• Slumping retail sales. On Friday, retail sales are likely to decline for the fifth month in a row -- the longest such streak since the numbers were first collected.
• Non-forecasting companies. A few companies are expected to report their results and claim that they lack visibility -- code for the future looks dark and they don't want to speculate publicly about just how dark.

So what will the market do this week? I have absolutely no idea. But it would not surprise me if it rose and fell wildly for no apparent reason.