Is there any good news?
Originally published at Daveism. Please leave any comments there.
The economy grew at an amemic 1.6% of GDP in the second quarter. That's not enough to dig us out of our unemployment hole, let alone keep it from going *up*. That's right, if the economy continues to 'grow' at this pace then unemployment will likely rise in 2010. That's not what I call a recovery, and a growing number of economists are trying to sound the alarm. Combine that with the slowest pace of new home sales for the month of July since we've started recording them, and things are looking pretty grim.
Let's face it; Democrats made a half-assed, spineless attempt to revive the economy. It certainly helped, but it wasn't enough. It looks like we will continue to be in a recession until all of our deleveraging of consumer and business debt is nearly done, and by then we'll be calling it a depression and China will be kicking our asses. Add on top of that the very real possibility that the GOP will re-gain majorities in both houses of Congress, make permanent the Bush tax cuts and inject new money into foreign wars instead of our economy, and the scenario gets even worse.
I really loathe Reagan right now. Is it bad form to feel this much hatred towards a dead guy? I'm working up a good loathing for Obama too, in as much as he had the intelligence and charisma to transform this country into a hard-working, self-sacrificing one again, but lacked the will to do it.
I really tried to think of a silver lining to this post. Social reforms seem to be gaining traction, but that has as much to do with the growing youth of our population as anything. Sadly as we seem to be growing more open-minded, we also seem to be getting greedier.