The New Economic "Normal": present weak, future dismal

[Inland]

Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is your future brighter than it was four years ago? No, because we can't pretend that the muddling and weak numbers we are receiving today are temporary products of a recession or a terrorist attack in 2001.

Its the New Normal, and its not so good. Its not a recession. Its not a recovery in progress. This is as good as it gets.

Stock markets, jobs, are muddling through, at best: both are down in absolute terms, and the growth is stagnant after a miniscule bounce back after the recession.

Incomes, particularly wages, are down.

The risk to families from loss of insurance and unemployment grows.

Our lifestyles is funded by sales of securities--our companies and debt obligations--to foreigners like the Saudis and Chinese.

And future liabilities in personal debt and public debt is exploding.

Can you pin this all on the government. Yes. Bush decided to expand public debt, give tax breaks to outsource, make wages bear the full brunt of financing the government, have a "stimulus" deficit that didn't stimulate anything, and give the world an oil shock by putting the entire ME oil production in jeopardy by introducing chaos to Iraq. Confidence is gone, skittishness is the rule of the day.