fast in terms of the economy then the market participants, in particular those institutions who have now become reliant on monetary policy to drive stocks they may force mr. bernanke to become more aggressive and take the pedal off and put pressure off the pedal and start to taper a little bit. faster. i think that s what most people are worried. we think it s nonsense. fundamentals drive stocks and we re in the mid of a grand transition from dependency on monetary policy to dependency onfuls and we think there s volatility along the way. you might be right. volatility is something that certainly real normal investors like me and people i know are going to care. terry, i want to talk about who s invested in the market and their 401(k), nest egg, retirement. look at savings numbers for the beginning of the year you can see the average 401(k) account hit a record high of $80,900.
welcome back to starting point. minding your business, your job, your economy, where do things stands, answer in over an hour. the may jobs report out at 8:30 eastern making investors a little nervous this morning. dow futures down about 20 points. expectations are low, 158,000 jobs added, 7.5% unemployment. that s another sign we re in kind of a soft patch. is that an economic term? over the past year the economy has been averaging more than that, 173,000 positions a month. even that s not great. at that pace analysts say it would take more than five more years to get back to where we were before the recession. you do want to see the private sector continuing to move forward. we would like to see this accelerate. feeling richer? american s net worth hit a record high $70 trillion, tops a previous record set in 2007 just before the recession. is that your net worth, berman. right. $70 million. $70 trillion times my net worth.
welcome back to starting point, i m christine romans. minding your business the s&p 500 record high, the nasdaq 12-year high. those two indices on track for six straight months of gains. today being the last trading day of the month. all this comes as the unemployment situation in the eurozone hit a record high. 12.1% compare that with our 7.6% in the u.s. stock futures this morning are fixed. veteran nba player jason collins announcing he is gay. could it boost his marketability? some experts are telling us yes. he could make maybe seven figures from this revelation. right now collins only has one endorsement deal, it s nike. and nike doesn t use him currently in any ads. that could change. other endorsement deals, speaking engagements could
thank you for having me. an investigation is underway after a freak elevator accident in new york city this morning. that tops our look at stories around the news nation. new york fire officials say the elevator inside a madison office building took off as a woman was stepping inside. it abruptly rose, dragging her with the elevator. two others who were in there at the time were evaluated for the psychological trauma and what they had seen. a new poll shows marriages have hit a record low. 51%. the trend is accompanied for rising tolerance of single parents. however, 61% of unmarried adults hope to wed. and time magazine unveiled its person of the year. it is, if you don t know by now, the protester. is time magazine said it is redefining people power around the world.
in a good mood but investors have their eyes firmly focused on a number of factors. we have portugal facing a bailout threat looming as the government nears collapse there, this after the opposition parties have withdrawn their crucial support for austerity measures. that s dragging down some markets and also dragging down the euro. in britain we have the budget looming, this coming a day after we found inflation was way above the central bank s 2% target, coming in at 4.4%. also not good news is that public sector borrowing last month hit a record for the month of february, a total of 11.8 billion pounds. that means the total public borrowing in the uk stands at 123.5 billion. so, adding that to the mix of issues that investors have already had to cope with over the last few days, pauline, such as libya, japan, as you can see stock markets still in the red, though just waiting to see what s going to happen later on