>taking longer than most economists thought to leave the gravitational pull of the Great Recession

Airplanes cannot go into orbit or escape the gravitational well of a planet. The higher up they go, the thinner the atmosphere and the greater velocity needed to have a certain amount of upward lift. Since, iirc, power requirements are the third exponent of velocity (or to think of it another way, less air means that air needs to be displaced with a higher final velocity for constant lift at higher altitudes), this reaches physical limits before escaping the atmosphere. Even ramjets are not even close to orbital velocity.

Will the top 10% who own 75% of wealth in this country stop spending money?

“Self-reinforcing” is actually pretty rare outside of leveraged financial markets. Cultural attitudes may shift as people become deluded into thinking we need more rich people, but this is more of a “new equilibrium” (or attractor in chaos theory) since it resists downward motion as well as upward.

Job creation without government spending, inflation, or trade barriers: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/

In fact, I think this post is about certainty. The certainty that nothing much will be done anytime soon.

Did you happen to listen to Dr. Freeman’s LSE lecture that Jared posted a link to here a few days ago? (http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=1457) These levels of government and political capture are truly frightening. Rather astounding to see what’s possible when entertainment determine what is “news.” See this Bill Moyers episode for more on how its accomplished: http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-big-money-big-media-big-trouble/

Problems mostly have a simple cause and can be fixed with simple procedures. When a problem becomes complex (“Too Big to Fail”) and the fix for that problem more complex/harder than the initial problem then maybe the problem was intentionally created to fix another problem (Like whites will shortly no longer be the majority) and we got a black as president and he is going to make it happen. If we (whites) are not the majority then lets destroy this country!

Please …. don’t tell me racism, bigotry, and segregationism have come a long way baby …. NOT. Look at the hysteria over Gays, illegals, unions (communists) , etc. When Bush was in the WH …. No problems (No Blood Libel there?!) Income Inequality …… Which culutres are hurt the most …. People of Color.

If Mr. Obama is re-elected, and there are no changes in the house and senate, then the pain and suffering will continue. If Romney wins then whites will have their savior and things will be redone for the benefit of whites only. Everybody else are just out there with no one to represent them.

Whats the fix? The last time we were so divided by race was the Civil War … I at least know how that turned out from reading about it (NYT .. DisUnion). That war did not solve the problem either!

Obama re-appointed Bernanke. Rick Perry’s denunciation of his monetary policy was instructive. The policy itself has been middle of the road and downright conservative at times. The Fed has done basically nothing when it comes to the unemployment half of its mandate and has targeted a level of “price stability” that would have tanked Reagan’s “Morning in America”. To the extent that Bernanke is politically shielded and tasked with promoting a growing and sound economy, his record–presiding over an economy with growth far below trend and shirking his admitted ability to improve it–suggests that he is indeed promoting the partisan interests served by a poor economy. And the fact that Bernanke was a Republican, originally appointed by a Republican shows that at its core, the notion that important institutions like the Fed and Supreme Court are non-partisan and above reproach is a fallacy too corrosive to bear lying down. The response for Democratic administrations should not be to pretend that meekly returning the favor by appointing balanced slates of nominees and nominating liberals much less liberal than conservative appointees are conservative. We have seen the results of that approach over the last three decades in the Supreme Court. It simply re-inforces the false notion that this is a center-right nation (that curiously can’t stomach letting the chips fall where they may if everyone is allowed to vote, fair and square) and dooms us to the prerogatives of people much less respectful of the norms of bipartisanship and the rigours of non-partisan academic inquiry.

The flames are smouldering in the utility room of a house on the other side of tracks. They’re representing those sipping cocktails around the pool out back.

How was it again that they got the power to make these choices and then stack the deck in their own favor with other bankers?

And I’d be happy to post a picture of myself and my colleagues to illustrate for the audience that that’s not just a thought experiment;-) Our company’s manpower matrix for Q1 of our FY13 (starting 7/1) is going to get worked out next week. The result will be… interesting. Actually, I’m not so concerned about Q1 as I am Q2 and beyond. Suffice it to say we’re not hiring. In fact, I’m pretty sure several people (out of 150) got pink slips last week. Unfortunately, I see no rational basis for believing that the outlook will improve in the foreseeable future.

At home we’ve probably made 3-4 years worth of capital investments over the past year because we had the savings to do so – had the chimney relined, replaced a couple pieces of old furniture with new, etc. That was quite deliberate – boost our demand to compensate for reduced demand elsewhere. Obviously we can’t keep that up long term but maybe could do it for the rest of this year. We’ll see. If my job goes away though we’ll have to circle the wagons and all non-essential purchases will stop immediately. It’s not complicated: no job = no income = no non-essential spending – and even non-essential spending only lasts until the savings run out.