Specifically, fire Larry Summers. I am not sure if this is good cop/bad cop but whatever it is it is not good:

In a pair of separate interviews, President Obama defended his administration's response to the economic crisis in the wake of Vice President Joe Biden's remark Sunday that "we misread how bad the economy was."

"I would actually -- rather than say misread, we had incomplete information," President Obama told NBC News' Chuck Todd. "What we always knew was that a) this recession was gonna be deep, and b) it was gonna last for a while."

The problem is that they were not bold enough.

The solutions have not reached the level of the problems.

NDD is analyzing the EIs and all of the indicators are moving in the direction where the region of convergence is "recovery".

I think the issue here is (and I've already commented) that just because some multinational corporation "recovers" that doesn't mean the U.S. middle class recovers.

It's just like the tech wipe out of the dot con bust. That sector "recovered" but...oopsy, they also offshore outsourced the jobs, just ignored the entire concept of age discrimination, thrashed their employees and demanded more imported workers.

Also, "profits" and even GDP (I'm going to write this stuff up in a post) in the day of globalization, doesn't mean what it used to....one can have a "recovery" yet the reality on the ground for most of America is still caca.

But, NDD is operating off of Macro Economics, indicators, predictors and other analysis....and it's good solid stuff.

So, I think the real argument here (between yellow weeds, green shoots) is what I'm drilling into lately.

Notice that I agree with both midtowng and NDD even though on the surface it appears they are coming up with opposite conclusions in analysis?

2008? 2007? 2000? Seriously, before the great financial meltdown this country has already been in decline for sometime. I don't think it recovered from the 2001 recession frankly.

I'll remain agnostic on EIs myself but what I would like to see more of on EP is precisely why we can have diverging realities to the extent we do with EIs versus life on main street.

To me, something is clearly wrong when one can have EIs which show a growth in GDP yet more people fall into poverty, have no retirement, etc. as in something is wrong with the metrics themselves.

I also think overall there is not enough focus on unemployment and this is why all are claiming the economy is recovering. I don't think one can call anything a recovery with a > 10% unemployment rate, regardless of it being a "lagging" indicator. I also think that a "jobless recovery" is quite a myth, i.e. that's not a recovery and something else is going on long term.

I already have one topic I found that I am working on writing about with all of the above.

So, to sum, I do not disagree with you (not by a long shot, except this minor thing on stable vs. contraction with the ISM) or midtowng or Reuters, etc. but I do believe we are not looking enough at the actual metrics themselves.

I mean one cannot call something a recovery while wading through homeless people out their front door.

If the majority of Wall Street economists are right, the U.S. recession will end this quarter and the global recovery won't be far behind....

Recovery will not be a smooth process, and there are plenty of reasons to be cautious about the strength of the rebound. As Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch economist Drew Matus put it, this quarter marks a "new beginning with some nagging reminders of the past."

The Reuters report does NOT see more contraction. It sees EXPANSION, with subdued (not "less") consumer spending, and continued job losses through the end of the year. I agree.

Reuters:Finally, charting the recovery's course

Now for the bad news.

The hangover from the credit binge and bust will linger. Households have a long way to go to patch the hole in their finances, which means even when the recession officially ends, consumer spending will probably remain subdued.

Wednesday's report on U.S. consumer credit bears close watching for more evidence that Americans are paring their credit card debt as banks clamp down on lending and consumers rethink attitudes toward borrowing and spending.

Job losses are likely to keep piling up at least through the end of the year. Last week's disappointingly weak June employment report served as a reminder of that. The data showed employers cut a net 467,000 positions last month, far more than expected and considerably more than in May.

Less consumer spending, more unemployment, more foreclosures, more contraction

I'm not fooled by the green shoots just yet.

It is - after all - a confidence game.

New orders down from, @ 51.1 in May 2009 in manufacturing.

Question is, since they break up manufacturing and non are they claiming manufacturing is only 10% of the US economy?

Manufacturing was close to 50 3 months ago as well. Then the entire NMI was above 50 in J-J-A, 2008.

pdf with graphs of various indexes.

I don't see how you get stabilize from keyword contract. What I see is "cliff of death has stopped for now" but that is ignoring jobs, which is still following the pied piper, then because they separate out manufacturing it looks slightly better than it really is.

I've been contemplating writing about how Hoover's policies are similar to Obama's.
People forget that Hoover was rather progressive for a Republican of the 1920's. He started a number of policies that people would mistake for the New Deal.

However, Hoover never tried to take on the establishment. In that regard Obama and Hoover are very much alike.

What FDR had that Obama does not is....Francis Perkins. First woman labor secretary but she was in the trenches, for years, on the ground with workers, dealing with Tammany Hall, knowing the incredible corruption and also firmly believing that many socialist ideas would actually work.

He also picked a host of people like this for his administration, Wallace is another.

Obama on the other hand....picked Larry Summers, a host of people who were in on the actual economic destruction.

To me, all of this is kind of a bummer that it's all coming out now. I tried, truly to write about all of this during the primaries and I really feel the entire blogosphere failed. They jumped on the mania, the concept of a campaign, as if it was all about simply ridding the country of George Bush, instead of focusing in on actual policy positions.

There was no real Progressive running though. Kucinich, even him has some truly screwed up positions.

If we could draft say Byron Dorgan, now there is a real Progressive/Populist. I think we should at least try to get him Senate Majority leader. Now imagine what kind of legislation would come up if he was in power in the Senate vs. what we have today?

I mean a "Democratic" Senate which blocks things that are managed to pass the house. It's Senate Inc.

Well at least Harper's wrote it. But instead of the bash can we ever get the public attention on policy details? That's the key to me.

Nice to see you Tony! I know you're "offline" for awhile but glad to see a post!