Bottom line: in spite of all the lies, deceptions, fabrications, and downright CRAP that you hear from the cheerleaders in the propaganda machines that we call the financial press, the only thing that has changed from last Fall's Armageddon has been that the Fed has printed a few trillion little green pieces of paper and stuffed them into the vaults of the banks.
Unemployment is still rising and getting worse. The only thing that makes the numbers appear better is the fact that we've switched to the "birth-death" model of reporting unemployment, which simply makes up jobs out of thin air. I don't know about you, but all these poor people whom have lost their incomes are still looking for work, as they were 6 months ago. I was watching the local news (Tampa FL) here the other day, and they were covering a local job fair. Each of the vendors in that job fair were saying that they've NEVER seen it this crowded and busy. Employment is the backbone of this economy, and there's simply little to no jobs out there. I have friends of mine that have been looking for jobs for over 6 months, and still nothing. Unemployed people don't go out to eat, they don't go to the movies, they don't take vacations, and they go light on Christmas and birthdays. Any stimuli that Mr. Obama tries to get into the hands of "former" consumers will go straight to paying down debt or to pay bills.
The bottom line is that this is not a cyclical downturn, it is the end of an era. What we are seeing is a structural breakdown of a system that cannot be maintained. You cannot run an economy like a road crew: i.e. one guy working and 6 guys standing around. We need to go back to adding value and making things, not borrowing to buy stuff that we don't make and can't pay for.
