David Leonhardt asks “Who Gets Credit for the Recovery?” at the New York Times. A lot could be said about his assumptions that there is a recovery, but for the sake of time, I’ll just take the first two sentences of his article:
THE housing bust finally seems to be over. Health care costs have slowed.
Okay, on that first statement. So the government has acted to continue with the same policies that created the housing bubble in an attempt to reinflate it, because we all know how well that worked out the first time around. And they have had some measured success in doing that. And so this is supposed to be indicative of a “recovery”.
Now, on that second statement. Click that link. What is the main reason costs have slowed?
The growth rate mostly slowed as millions of Americans lost insurance coverage along with their jobs.
Oh! So I guess health care costs slowing isn’t exactly evidence of recover, then.
One could go on and address the rest of the evidence for “recovery” presented, but it would be probably be superfluous when the very first two points offered to make the case for “recovery” are such as they are (and I don’t have time).
Mr. Leonhardt begins the second paragraph with:
There is still no guarantee that the economy is on a stable path to recovery…
You can say that again.