Perspective on the "End of the Recession"

The positive Q3 GDP numbers added lift to the voices singing from the end-of-recession song sheet. (My Bing search turned of 4,100,000 results for "end of the recession," suggesting a very large choir.) There's no reason to gainsay the data, but there's merit in applying some context.

Dr. Jeff Cornwall at the Entrepreneurial Mind looks at this Reuters blog post by James Pethokoukis opining that the stimulus effect has had little enduring recovery effect. Cornwall's conclusion:

Artificially induced growth by massive government spending is not the road to recovery and certainly not the way to create a sustained economic expansion.

Adding to the concern is this report from AP, indicating that the stimulus jobs impact has been overstated

The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president's $787 billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program's first progress report.

The discrepancy raises questions about the reliability of a key benchmark the administration uses to gauge the success of the stimulus. 

The BBC also carries a report that casts doubt on the "global recovery."

Unemployment levels across the 16 countries that use the euro rose to 9.7% in September, the highest rate since January 1999.

This brought the number of people unemployed across the eurozone region to 15.3 million.

The rate across all 27 members of the European Union rose to 9.2%, with 286,000 more people now jobless. This brings the total to 22.12 million.

To conclude this Friday downer, there's this from the Christian Science Monitor's "new economy blog."

Americans’ paychecks aren’t growing.

They actually shrank 0.2 percent from August to September, according to a Commerce Department report released Friday. Except for a couple months this summer, that was the lowest total since 2006. The fall was more acute in the private sector, but that was masked because government payrolls reached a new record(!) of $1.19 trillion in September.

With income down (because fewer people are working), the prospects for increased spending this holiday season are fading.

In the midst of this economic distress, Congress rushes headlong toward major climate change regulations and a government takeover of health care. Nothing is more important that a strong, private sector economic recovery.