1.  Best Long-Term Thinking:  Roger Altman is Chairman of Evercore Partners and wrote in the current issue of “Time:”  The U.S continues to enjoy built-in advantages that other nations lack:  a growing population and the prospect of further immigration, big and flexible housing and stock markets, the most dynamic energy sector in the world, a huge and resilient consumer market and unparalleled technology leadership.

2.  Best Saying-Everything-in-a-Title:  RiverFront Investment Group is an investment manager, whose current newsletter is entitled Normal Pullback After Extreme Optimism.  That sums up the current investing environment.  While the market was unreasonably optimistic earlier this year and the stock market got ahead of itself, this current pullback is perfectly normal.  (they also do not expect tapering to begin next month.)

3.  Best Forecast-of-the-Day:  This week, Goldman Sachs (AKA the Vampire Squid) predicted the S&P will end this year at 1,750 — it is about 1,650 now.  They also predict it will end 2014 at 1,900.  They also “expect the Fed to taper QE at the Sept meeting.”

With respect to the market’s short-term obsession with the question of when tapering by the Fed will begin, I think RiverFront is correct, i.e., tapering will NOT begin in September, and think that both the Vampire Squid and my beloved Dr. Jeremy Siegel of Wharton are incorrect.  We’ll see . . .

That’s enough reading for today.  It is time to get to work, but the clear take-away is that the stock market is much more obsessed with the short-term actions of the Fed than the long-term potential of America.