Numbers are in. Unemplyment is at 8.8% with 216,000 new jobs. I'm skeptical that we can get a sustained recovery with gas prices as high as they are.
I mean.. think about it: Low taxes, government services and support being slashed, insane speculation just looking for something to exploit (food, oil).. middle class languishing, suffering from high unemployment, wage declines, and a major housing glut.... while the rich live in a "roaring" economy of their own protected from the masses.
Our economy is one enormous ponzi scheme... and when it goes.... God help us.
Right now the only glimmer of hope is that the dollar keeps weakening at a steady rate while our own domestic energy sources grow. Manufacturing has been all but beaten to death in this country... but it is promising that they are making up a decent chunk of the job growth pie. And when a country makes things out of resources it produces itself... things go better.
Of course, it's the result of extremely loose monetary policy designed to shift wealth to large banks (and thus the super-rich) as quickly as possible to the point where they reached the level of audacity that they simply outright give money to the banks by the trillions to speculate with on debt schemes like CDS and the derivatives you're complaining about. Plus you have the more petty forms of corporate welfare such as the military-industrial complex, prison-industrial complex (war on drugs + 'privatized' prisons), farm subsidies, "green" subsidies (why GE is paying no taxes), etc.
Meanwhile, middle-class people are completely shut out of the ability to acquire upwards mobility due to extremely burdensome and nonsensical regulations that make it impossible to finance any just about useful startup on an average person's salary. That's why you see such a huge number of restaurants opening, despite over two thirds of them failing - it's one of the few areas in which an average person can still scrounge up enough funds to start a business despite all the mandates, fees, and taxes the government imposes. And even that's being threatened increasingly thanks to inane requirements like this 'calorie counting' crap and 'parking requirements.' Even the college industry as is, amounts to a perverse incentive to discriminate against those with only community college or minor technical training and make people take on escalating levels of debt..
