[fnid]

An extended period of unemployment will be very bad for a society based on consumption. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the US economy and consumers are a dying species.

I see few signs that we are in recovery. What I see is boredom with gloom. People want the economy to be in recovery, so they find reasons to believe it so.

[bh23ha]

That's true, we may not be in a recovery but in a restructuring. Restructuring an economy is much more painful then a run of the mill recession.

However if we are indeed restructuring to be less of a consumer nation and more of a manufacturing and export nation again, in the long run that's a good thing.

Or to put it in other words, you can't run both trade and fiscal deficits at the same time for ever. Things would not have gone this far if the US didn't have such a huge fiscal deficit, which allowed China to depress their currency by buying US debt. If it had not been for China buying so much US debt, the dollar would have slowly fallen against the yuan over the years, and the yuan would have slowly risen. And if oil wasn't traded in US dollars, we would have invested more in insulation and alternatives much sooner. Now this is all finally happening and it is painful, but unavoidable.