Akkam’s Razor

I tend to come down hard on the side of pessimism, but with the DOW at it’s highest since 2001 despite the high cost of oil a sure sign of recovery?  GDP has been increasing steadily.  Interest rates appear to have stopped their decline.  Unemployment is down into Clinton territory (4.9%).  So why isn’t anyone singing happy days are here again?  More importantly, why aren’t Americans who are being polled as cheery about the economic good news as the administration?

Well, if memory serves me correctly, you need 250k jobs created per month to break even.  That leaves us with a 1m job deficit (2 million jobs were created in 2005).  I hear all this talk of sales being up 29% for the Christmas Season - but sales are not the same things as profits, and the discounting was pretty severe.  Then there’s the is-there-or-isn’t-there-a-housing-bubble question, followed by the national debt and the trade deficit.  Oh, did I mention that we’ve hit the debt ceiling again on the Federal Budget?

This post over at Think Progress sums it up nicely - the American people aren’t enjoying this recovery - so who is?