It's still early, but there's some good news today, with the Dow "pushing past 9,000 for the first time since early January," and with "some better-than-expected earnings reports, including one from the Ford Motor Company, and the latest government report on housing, which said that the sale of existing home rose 3.6 percent in June, the third consecutive monthly increase." Overall, while traders remain cautious, "optimism on Wall Street seems to be growing," as is the mood over at the Federal Reserve, where chairman Bernanke said Tuesday that the economy was finally improving (although the recovery could "prove transient").With all this good news, can we conclude that the nasty Bush/Republican Recession - this disaster officially began in December 2007 and was horrendously bad by late 2008, all under George W. Bush's watch - we currently find ourselves in is finally at the "beginning of the end" (or even the "end of the beginning," to quote Winston Churchill)? Could it be that the Democrats' economic recovery package, the one that PhD Economist (ha) Eric Cantor has been declaring to be a "failure" (based, undoubtedly, on the reams of data and other hard evidence Cantor closely examines every day - lol), is actually working exactly as intended? Could it be that the same Republicans who were starting to say that Barack Obama "owns" the bad economy will no longer say that if it turns around and becomes a good, or even improving, economy? On that last point, I can't wait for the day that the economy is booming and all of a sudden the Republicans somehow figure out a way to take credit and/or claim that Obama had nothing to do with it. It's as predictable as the sun rising in the morning, gravity, and anthropogenic global warming.
Unfortunately, I believe it's a bit too early to declare "mission accomplished" on the economy, as George W. Bush infamously did with regard to the Iraq War. The fact is, Wall Street tends to look ahead a quarter or two, as do oil markets (not surprisingly, the positive economic signs have helped push oil up to $67 per barrel). In contrast, unemployment tends to be a lagging indicator of economic recovery. Thus, it is very possible that we could be exiting this recession by the end of 2009/early 2010, but that unemployment could stay stubbornly high for a year or two afterwards. We'll see, and I certainly hope that this doesn't turn out to be a "jobless recovery" ("The phrase originated in the early 1990s in the United States, to describe the economic recovery at the end of President George H.W. Bush's term; it came back into use during the early 2000s").
Instead, what I'm hoping is that the long-term infrastructure investment portion of the economic recovery program, combined with a major push towards "green jobs" and clean energy, combined with policies that encourage economic growth and wage growth (like health care reform that increases labor mobility by ensuring portability), combined with regulatory policies that prevent another financial meltdown, will result in an economic recovery under Obama and the Democrats that is completely different than the ones we saw under the Bushes (41 and 43).
Of course, this is the worst nightmare for politically obsessed Republicans like Eric Cantor, who devoutly wish that Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress to fail, no matter what the level of pain that might mean for the American people. Having no positive or constructive ideas of their own to offer, however, that's what this once-great party has been reduced to: 1) angry "tea parties" protesting...something or other, nobody's really sure, and demanding their "country back" (from what or whom, nobody really knows); and 2) constant trash talk by Republican "leaders" about what should be a national effort to turn this economy around. Sad.
P.S. And then we have ol' Bob McDonnell, still pining for the glories of Bush economics. Can you believe these guys?!?
