For first time in six years, half of Americans say U.S. running well … A national poll released on Friday found 50 percent of Americans believe the United States is running well, the first time that at least half of respondents answered positively in more than six years. The CNN/ORC International poll asked the question: "How well are things going in the country today – very well, fairly well, pretty badly or very badly?" – Reuters

Dominant Social Theme: It's all okay out there, after all.

Free-Market Analysis: We know it is okay because CNN has commissioned a poll of around 1,000 people in the US and many of these believe the US is "running well" according to Reuters, which profiled the poll.

From our point of view, especially given the recent news about the underperformance of the economy – which is still suffering from the effects of the Greater Recession, from what we can tell – we don't see how this poll can be accurate.

It is, in fact, part of a larger promotional toolkit that has been used by globalists for the past half-century or more to either ascertain certain policies that can be implemented without much resistance or to generate results that can be broadcast supporting similar policies.

Here's more from the article:

The latest survey, of 1,012 adults from April 5-7, showed an exact 50/50 split between those who answered very well and fairly well versus those who answered pretty badly or very badly, CNN and ORC International said, posting results of the poll on CNN's website.

The last time the number came in above 50 percent was January 2007, more than a year before the collapse of Wall Street titans such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, before the extent of the sub-prime mortgage quandary was widely known, and before the financial crisis sent the U.S. economy into recession from December 2007 to June 2009.

The January 2007 poll showed 57 percent of respondents saw the United States operating very well or fairly well versus 42 percent who saw the country running pretty badly or very badly.

Now, to be fair to the reporting, we do learn at the end of the article that survey results were far worse in November of 2008, when some 83 percent of respondents answered pretty badly or fairly badly. So from an analytic standpoint, sentiment might be seen as improving, assuming the polls' methodologies and targets remained the same.

Nonetheless, our questions about this poll remain. We simply don't think things have gotten much better in the US. In fact, with health care costs scheduled to rise thanks to "Obamacare" they could get a lot worse.

Unemployment remains terribly high and taxes and regulations continue to creep up, as well (even excluding Obamacare). The US fedgov itself remains paralyzed on issues having to do with cost cutting and we don't see much improvement on the international scene.

If world markets don't improve, how then are US markets to make progress? The bright spot is in the area of financial markets, but even here, one can easily make the case that these markets reflect fiat money printing rather than sincere industrial sentiment.

Finally, read the comments on the Reuters website beneath the article and see for yourself the kind of reception from Reuters readers (ordinarily not a group inclined to vituperative comments) this report has received.

The commentary is in many cases virtually incandescent, with feedbackers questioning the poll itself, the analysis of the poll and the way it was conducted.

The general tenor of the comments is that the US economy is not improving and that the poll, to put it mildly, is inaccurate.

We think so, too.