State of the U.S. Economy

Sorry about not blogging yesterday. I didn't find time to actually get anything written down, however, my search for 5 good economic indicators did get me reading. I figure I'll post this now and get to today's news after.

So I looked into a lot of different indicators, trying not to use the most typical choices everyone would expect. I didn't use GDP growth or CPI% change. I tried to get a little more creative, but still find information that would be most useful to explaining our current situation. I came up with the unemployment rate and talked about why it was important to get jobs under control. The chart on the left represents percent job losses in every post WWII recession. It's easier to see blown up. What you'll notice is a trend, starting in 1981, where it takes employment longer and longer to bounce back. At this point, a recovery like the one in 2001 or 1990 wouldn't feel very good for the average American. In that scenario, unemployment would likely remain above 8% for at least another 2 to 2 1/2 years. A poor jobs market isn't going to help consumer sentiment (another indicator I chose) and it won't help erode away excess capacity, (got that one too.) I keep hearing people referring to job numbers as a "lagging indicator." Why is it starting to feel like a self fulfilling prophecy? If the market expects jobs to be lagging for the foreseeable future, they will continue lagging! At some point I really feel like we're going to need another, more direct stimulus to get this thing moving again, that is unless we want to concede horrible employment numbers until 2013.

Now, a lot of people are going to scream foul here, yelling about the national debt and what not, but let me assure you; China does not own the United States. Yes, if they quit buying U.S. debt it would weaken the dollar. But would it be such a bad thing to have a weak dollar right now? In my mind it would only help U.S. competitiveness and help job creation.