it s showing, you know, continued appreciation of where we are relative to where we could have been. let s show the markets, if we can. green arrows across the board but as ron is saying really slow going. as we re hovering around that psychological mark of 13,000. . i m not going to get hung up on 13,000. when you look at the stock markets a valuations, they are reasonable. when you look at the economic data that we ve gotten, they re supportive and corporate profits have been helpful. i think the economy is in a pretty good spot now, and maybe not everyone agrees, but i think it s a lot stronger and will continue to get stronger relative to expectations over the next several months. as we re watching president obama at andrews air force base going on to air force one for that talk in virginia. with the president just leaving as we re seeing, mike viqueira is standing by at the white house for us. mike, why so important to take a message to the battleground state of virginia to
that we see from the white house not only this week but on these jobs fridays, the first friday of every month, in this case the second friday of the month because february was so short. the president often schedules these events at manufacturing plants and as ron reported, manufacturing is one of the bright spots in the economy. we can expect the president to do what he has done for the past several months now as the unemployment rate continues to decline. the white house telling us accentuating the positive, it s gone down 0.8% since last august. almost half a million jobs in the manufacturing sector have been created over the course of the last two years. 24 straight months of private sector growth as well. the president is going down to a rolls royce factory and this is something that he did the other day in north carolina. emphasizing foreign investment into manufacturing. as for the politics of this, the president obviously the first democrat to win virginia since 1964 and lbj an