As Charlotte and I blogged earlier, the President’s buddies in the mainstream media just can’t help themselves from saying the U.S. economy is in a recovery phase. But maybe the enthusiasm is starting to wane. CNBC has a more honest (read: glum) article on the sputtering economy:
The last month has been a horror show for the U.S. economy, with economic data falling off a cliff, according to Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London. “It seems that almost every bit of data about the health of the US economy has disappointed expectations recently,” said Riddell, in a note sent to CNBC on Wednesday.
“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”
“And that’s just in the last week and a bit,” said Riddell.
Pointing to the dramatic turnaround in the Citigroup “Economic Surprise Index” for the United States, Riddell said the tumble in a matter of months to negative from positive is almost as bad as the situation before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Let’s just repeat that: “almost as bad as the situation before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.” I’m sure I don’t have to repeat the talking points about how the stimulus (both of them) was going to save us from this sort of collapse.
So basically, to quote a favorite vacation t-shirt phrase: my government spent all this money and all I got was this lousy double dip recession.