Economy is beating expectations despite sequester - Paul Davidson, USA Today

[Bill USA]

.. a very good article about the economy in USA Today...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/18/economy-federal-reserve-march/1996163/

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For the third consecutive year, solid first-quarter job growth and budding hopes for a stronger recovery are tempered by the specter of a midyear swoon. In the past, Europe's financial crisis, Japan's earthquake and the debt-ceiling showdown in Congress have slowed early-year economic surges.

This year, private-sector momentum is threatened by January's payroll tax increase and across-the-board federal spending cuts that will likely affect the economy in a couple of months unless the White House and Congress reach a deal to delay most of them.

Yet this time is different, experts say, because the underpinnings of the economy are sturdier.

Both households and businesses have shed much of the debt they amassed before the recession, leaving them freer to spend and invest. The housing market is finally turning around and stocks have rallied to all-time highs. Consumers and corporations seem inured to Washington's dysfunction after the biggest potential tax increases were averted by the New Year's fiscal cliff deal between Congress and President Obama.

"The private sector is kicking into a higher gear," says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics.
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[Igel]

1. Good.

Of course, it puts a lot of economists in a bind.

We're told that deficits and debt are good and appropriate in a recession.

The (R) response has been, "So, when do we lower the deficit and pay down the debt?"

And the economists' response has fairly consistently been, "When the economy is doing well we should eliminate the deficit and pay down the debt."

Of course, we keep redefining what "doing well" means. Currently the depths of the abysmal * economy is considered an unreachable goal, with "doing well" at an unemployment level above that. Look for those goalposts to change.