Just addressing the problem a bit more with our economy, I looked through my archives and discovered this gem from a writer at Economist who speaks to the American economy. This was dated just a few weeks ago and instead of blaming people, we shoud put the heat on the WH and congress to TALK to each other about trying to solve the problem.
Posturing for poll numbers, etc is not going to cut it....
This address the interest rates I mentioned earlier....
"America is still in a world in which interest rates are effectively zero. It will be in that world for at least another six months and probably quite a bit longer. Futures markets reckon we will be well into 2016 before rates reach even 1%. For most of the next two years, in other words, the monetary response to any negative shock, domestic or abroad, will come entirely in the form of unconventional policy. That makes me extremely nervous, as the Fed is obviously uncomfortable about relying so heavily on unconventional tools. Any delay or under-response to a shock due to this discomfort makes a recession much more likely. And I would note that over time and across countries tightening cycles off of zero lower bound episodes tend to be much more abbreviated than what we would normally expect. A half point rise would represent the opening act of a tightening cycle in most cases. Coming off of the ZLB, however, it may well represent the beginning, middle and end."
And while I posted a very rosy and optimistic point of view in an earlier post, we have to be realistic......
"One metric might be a cross-country comparison. On that score one might suppose optimism is clearly warranted. America's recovery is the envy of the rich world. On the other hand, that is not saying much. Being the best of the bunch when the bunch has done so miserably is not exactly reason for cheer. And while America is far more insulated from global ups and downs than other economies it is not immune. Poor enough performance abroad would indeed slow American growth, particularly if that poor performance were linked to a major financial meltdown. On a cross-country basis one can make a case for optimism, but it's not a strong one.
An historical comparison, by contrast, leads to a much bleaker assessment of the current recovery. The employment recovery since June of 2009 is the worst of any American rebound in the postwar period, and the GDP recovery is the second worst, outdone only by the performance after the 2001 recession. America remains well below the levels of output and employment one might reasonably have expected it to attain both before the Great Recession and in its immediate aftermath. It is true that growth in GDP and employment has been surprisingly—even shockingly—steady and resilient. But that makes it all the more remarkable that America has made up so little of the ground lost since 2007.
That brings us to another case for pessimism: the limited nature of the recovery. GDP is growing, but you can't eat GDP. You can't even eat employment. Incomes you can eat, if you spend them. Real GDP per capita is only a shade above its level of seven years ago: $50,675 now to $49,455 in the third quarter of 2007. At the median the performance has been much worse; real median household income tumbled from 2007 and has barely recovered."
The real point and brought home by njbchbum post is that nothing is touching the average Joe in anyway. I hope that people will do the math and read and realize that penalizing the corporations will not either.
Lets root for bi partisan working together to address this problem
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