Back towards a US double-dip (FT)

more: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/aa81cf92-8c3f-11e0-b1c8-00144feab49a.html

Back towards a US double-dip
By Robert Reich

Published: June 1 2011 12:51 | Last updated: June 1 2011 12:51

The US economy was supposed to be in bloom by late spring, but it is hardly growing at all. Expectations for second-quarter growth are not much better than the measly 1.8 per cent annualised rate of the first quarter. That is not nearly fast enough to reduce America’s ferociously high level of unemployment. The labour department will tell us on Friday whether the jobs situation improved in May, but there has been no sign of a surge in hiring. Nor in wages. Average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory employees – who make up 80 per cent of non-government workers – dropped to $8.76 in April. Adjusted for inflation, that’s lower than they were in the depths of the recession.

Meanwhile, housing prices continue to fall. They are now 33 per cent below their 2006 peak. That is a bigger drop than recorded in the Great Depression.

corporate 'Merikuh hates Obama so much that they will hold on to the trillions they have just to kick him out. foul play in effort to destroy democracy. these ***holes need to be hung & quartered.

The Justice systems is obviously not going to do anything, so it comes down to either we live with the round robin the rich are going to continue or we spill some blood in order to show we will no longer live by the whims of the "royalty".

my husband & i are both union and have been for 30+ years. we deliberated over going to WI back in the day, but decided we'd better not, as to the fact that we'd be the first yahoos to start throwing bottles, rocks, what have you. i guess i'll wait for the first bullets to fly from the teabagging idiots then join in the fracas ... :)

That would require we got out of the first dip, which we didn't - we just papered it over with debt, buying a little bit of time and making the final reckoning all the worse.

John Boner is a terrible House leader so of course we are regressing.