Postcards: A 700-Year-Old Trick Still Fooling the Markets

Here in Puerto Rico, it just sounds like a Mariachi band following me around on the Manhattan subway. Plus, the week ahead.

Dear Fellow Expat,

Giotto di Bondone was an Italian artist from the late Middle Ages.

He lived in Florence in the 13th century and studied under the great mosaic artist Cimabue after the latter discovered the Giotto at 10.

The legend goes that Cimabue had left his shop for a little while.

And Giotto, in his prankful ways, painted a fly on the nose of a portrait the master painter worked on.

Upon returning to his painting, Cimabue saw the fly on the painting…

He swatted at it… once… twice… three times.

It was an illusion, one that highlighted Giotto's talent.

Following Friday's jobs report… I'm reminded of the painter and the fly.

Just as Cimabue was fooled by Giotto's masterful illusion, it seems the financial markets are being duped by an equally convincing economic mirage.

Friday's jobs report caused excitement and action. Bloomberg and others are swatting at this economic canvas with glee, celebrating a huge bounce in new jobs and declaring the Fed's policies vindicated.

"Soft landin…