Without job gains

Just what exactly is recovering ?

Bank balance sheets using TARP cash and not writing down the junk they have on their books. They look good on paper but know better than to loan.

Goldman Sac's profit margin and million dollar payments to the brokers ?

As I drive by boarded up buildings and stores, empty factories, and now vacant auto dealerships, I fail to see much recovery other than the street crews working on shovel ready projects from the stimulus program.

Whatever that means.

...is always the last data series to turn around as a recession/depression ends.

I think the larger issue is what type of jobs will a recovery create?

Manufacturing is on a long term downslope unless we start to resort to more protectionism, which doesn't seem likely given the current adoration of free trade.

Like it or not, the US can not compete with the low wages of the developing countries.

Pretty much the last thing to take an upswing.

So I hear.

in 1950 manufacturing jobs accounted for 30 percent of the U.S labor force. by 1980 it was down to 20 percent and currently, manufacturing jobs make up a little less than 9 percent of the labor force in America.......... think about it............

if we don't make stuff here in the states, i don't see how we are going to turn it around.

a manufactured item?

As long as jobs are mostly to "service" each other's needs & wants, one break in the chain starts a downward spiral.

School teacher loses job, buys less groceries, grocery store clerk loses hours, removes kids from daycare, daycare worker loses job & cannot have new brakes put on car, brake-shop worker gets laid off & cannot get kids teeth cleaned, hygienist loses hours & cannot keep her daughter in dance class, dance class teacher cannot afford rent as students dwindle, closes & lays off employees, who can no longer afford to make car payments..etc etc etc etc magnified by millions..

Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/business/economy/21inequality.html?_r=4&hp

snip...

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent.

They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality.

But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon.

more...

Some of the clearest signs of the reversal of fortunes can be found in data on spending by the wealthy. An index that tracks the price of art, the Mei Moses index, has dropped 32 percent in the last six months. The New York Yankees failed to sell many of the most expensive tickets in their new stadium and had to drop the price. In one ZIP code in Vail, Colo., only five homes sold for more than $2 million in the first half of this year, down from 34 in the first half of 2007, according to MDA Dataquick. In Bronxville, an affluent New York suburb, the decline was to two, from 17, according to Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.
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You can read more about these poor rich people at the link above. McAfee, the anti-virus software guy, "is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million. Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks."

Poor bastard. :nopity:

We need to overturn the trade agreements which should never have been put

thru in the first place!!!

the business I work for caters to what I consider the obscenely rich - the one's with 10,000 sq ft homes or even multiple 10,000 sq ft homes. We wholesale to the people who retail to that group, and the feedback I get from the retailers is that the obscenely wealthy won't buy ANYTHING unless it's "a fire sale". They want the luxuries, but since they know the economy for the underlings is pure shit they make it clear - if YOU won't sell it to me at your cost then I'll find someone who will.

And check out the furniture in the kids rooms and the rec room. My friend who deals in unfinished discounted furniture says that is his stuff in those rooms.