the dow has not been this high since may of 2008. also the nasdaq, which is moreorless the tech stocks, nasdaq closed at the highest level in eleven years today. eleven years. those great numbers were due in large part to the fact the monthly jobs numbers came out today. the expectation was that the number of new jobs in the country in january would be about 140,000. it ended up being more like 240,000. that is how many jobs were added last month. they revised the earlier numbers to reflect thousands more jobs were also created in november and in december. today s excellent jobs report means that we have now had 23 straight months of job growth. the unemployment rate has dropped from a high of 10% down to 8.3%. even the internal numbers that came out are good. it s not like a whole bunch of people got hired to wrap packages for christmas or something, the numbers are good in professional and business services, the numbers are good in hospitality, health care, manufacturing. a