Better than the alternatives

ONE more milestone has been passed on the road to recovery. On March 5th the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,253.77, a new high, finally surpassing the level reached in October 2007, just as the subprime-mortgage crisis really took hold. (The S&P 500, a more broadly based and better constructed index, stayed just shy of its record high.)

Wall Street is not alone. Stockmarkets in the developed world have been in fairly buoyant mood since the start of the year with the MSCI World Index rising by 5% in the first two months of 2013, and the Japanese market gaining 13.5%. Emerging markets, in contrast, have been flat.