NY Times - "Why So Glum? Numbers Point to a Recovery"

[TomCADem]

Interesting take that the Obama administration has been overly cautious in describing the recovery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/business/09norris.html?hp

Usually you can depend on the White House to view the economy with the most rose-tinted glasses available. But it was not until last week, after a strong employment report, that President Obama started to sound a little optimistic.

“The tough measures that we took — measures that were necessary even though sometimes they were unpopular — have broken this slide and are helping us to climb out of this recession,” he said in a speech at a factory making battery components in North Carolina.

Note, however, that he seemed to believe the country remained in recession. It is virtually certain that is not accurate, as least as will be determined by the arbiters of recession at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “The recession is over,” one of those arbiters, Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard, wrote this week. But the White House is unwilling to make that claim.

* * *

In 1982, Democrats scoffed at a surging stock market and thought a severe recession would last for a very long time. They were confident that the economy would doom Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984. All they had to do was make clear they offered a stark alternative to the failing policies of the incumbent

[Mojeoux]

1. I suspected as much

Obama is too careful to toot his own horn.

[Newest Reality]

2. What?

There was a recession? When and where? I don't see any recession.

Oh, well, I just downed a whole bottle of Colapsex after I came out of the coma.

Looks like things are going great, and, if you ignore all the complex, silly details behind the scenes and take your Colapsex three times a day, then not only is the recession I missed in the coma over, you are all on your way to increased consumption, plenty of dirt-cheap oil, and lots and lots of jobs, (please only two or three per person)! Don't worry about wages, there should be plenty of high interest credit available for you to finance yourself into an orgasm of pre-recession, orgasmic delight.

I'll even bet your towns and states will all show some major revenue increases soon so they don't have to turn off all the traffic lights or shut-down the police stations on the weekends.

Start flipping those houses again, folks! The birds are singing and our non-negotiable way of life is set in titanium. Spend long and proud.

Everything is fine and ... oh WOW, look! There's the beautiful, stunning, scintillating, SHINY THING!!! Join me as I stare at it in awe for a while. I just can't type anymore since it is so wonderful.

[leftstreet]

3. +1

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. +2

With the caveat I don't blame the president. He's playing the hand he was dealt.

To me the most important metric is unemployment. I don't think anybody could or should be happy until it's brought down to reasonable levels which might be never.

[zbdent]

4. Republicans were predicting a massive recession, probable depression,

had Clinton's budget passed in 1993/1994 ... didn't have a recession under Clinton ...

Bush43 took office promising fiscal responsibility ... two recessions during his term, currently sloshing our way through the worst recession since the Depression ... which started under Bush43 (of course, Texas-distributed history textbooks will say it started under Obama ...)