What Recovery?

Inducing financial disaster:

Back in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote an Op-Ed titled "Welcome to the Recovery." Two years later, most Americans would be right to ask: What recovery?

I harbor grave doubts concerning little Timmy's qualifications to balance his personal checkbook; he is utterly unqualified to run the Treasury Department. Of course he doesn't have to be qualified, he just has to do what he's told.

Real median household income has fallen 4.8% since the so-called recovery officially began in June 2009. That's a steeper decline than occurred during the recession itself, when incomes dropped 2.6%, according to a new report from Sentier Research.

Meanwhile, there are 800,000 more long-term unemployed than when the "recovery" started, and the ranks of those who aren't in the labor force at all have swelled by nearly 8 million.

And real unemployment (defined as the people who are capable of working but are not), is higher than it was during the Great Depression. Thanks, LBJ! Your War On Prosperity is chuggin' along just fine.

Now the Congressional Budget Office warns that the economy is so fragile it will drop back into a recession if Congress doesn't do something to stop a raft of tax hikes and automatic spending cuts from kicking in at the start of next year.

"Back into a recession"? I wasn't aware we'd left the first one.

And Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is talking about how the central bank still has room to pump additional stimulus into the economy and "strengthen the recovery."

Bernanke is an even bigger tool than Timmy. At least Geithner can count.

The only mystery is why the public refuses to pin the blame where it belongs. According to Pew, just 34% say Obama deserves "a lot" of blame for today's middle class woes. More blame George W. Bush, foreign competition, Congress, banks and big companies.

No mystery: it's because that's what the mass media is telling them. Most people still get their news from television and paper rags. That's changing, but I'm concerned it's not changing fast enough.

On the campaign trail this year, Obama says his program is working, but he needs more time to dig the country out of the deep recession hole.

Of course it's working. That's because his goal is to make the hole deeper, not dig us out of it. And if the majority of voters don't cotton to that fact by November, we'll be a socialist nation in fact by the end of Barry's second term.