Dave Aielli

Feel Any Different? Well, we have a new President of the United States. Feel any different? We still have COVID raging, a vaccine-fueled recovery in the works, a bitterly divided electorate and an impeachment trial coming up. While that may not seem vastly different from last week, we might keep our eyes open to look for changes. One place to look would be Congress, because that is where the new agenda will land. And while the agenda itself is particularly important, the re...action of Congress to the agenda will be very telling. For the past several years, Congress has been as bitterly divided as the electorate. And while there has been a lot of noise about both houses being controlled by one party, the truth is that the Senate is also very divided at 50-50. So, will the agenda be a knock-down drag-out fight, or will there be an air of dialogue and compromise? More likely, the reality will be somewhere in-between. Even that might be considered progress. We are likely to see a new agenda and it would be nice if it is shaped by more participants in a show of unity. We could use it.

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Rising home equity and falling interest rates are two of the factors leading to the success of the housing market in the past year.

Nothing is Easy For those who are classic rock fans, the title of this very old song by the British band Jethro Tull might best describe our 2020 and our attempts to climb out of the pandemic. Certainly 2020 was not easy and our attempts to curtail the pandemic were not easy as well. Even the solutions have not been easy. We did get a strong stimulus bill out of Congress as an initial response to the crisis. But the second bill took excruciatingly long to negotiate. And even... after it passed, there were questions about whether the bill would be signed (it was) and whether the amount of the checks sent out should be increased (it was not). The vaccine development process was very impressive, and we were all thrilled when the rollout began in December. But it turns out that vaccinating millions and millions will not be so easy either, as we fell behind right off the bat. Let us hope the pace of vaccinations will pick up as we move along. For now, we can say definitively that nothing was easy about 2020 and regaining our momentum in 2021 will not be easy either. The employment report last week was just a reminder of how far we have to go. But we are confident we will get there. This country was not built on easy street.

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