Today’s must read is titled Fooled By Stimulus: Economists Still Missing The Huge Economic Regime Change. Here’s a bit from the middle of this article from Business Insider:

If there is another round of stimulus accompanied by another uptick in the economy (the former is likely coming but probably not the latter), I have no doubt economists would think we are off to the races again and this was just another “soft patch”.

In contrast, I propose we are going to flirt in and out of recession for perhaps a decade, just as Japan did. Interestingly, every time the Japanese economy rebounded slightly, economists thought “thank God, deflation is over”, only to see the Japanese economy relapse.

Problems Many, Solutions Nonexistent

    * Tide of Debt: Consumers are swimming against a tide of debt with no way to pay it back.
    * Demographics: Boomers are heading into retirement scared half to death because they did not save enough.
    * Jobs: There is no source of jobs
    * Wages: Global wage arbitrage
    * Attitude Changes: a secular shift in the attitudes of consumers towards housing and risk taking is underway.
    * The Fed is powerless to change attitudes.

In all, a well written and substantiated article. While it is true that economics seems to be a guessing game at which very few academics seem to be very good, this one has the advantage of matching with the layman’s common sense observational approach. That is, the stimulus was wasted and ended up making it worse for us in the long run, nothing has changed that will fix anything, and the government remains out of control.

Sit back and try to relax. It’s going to be a long, very uncomfortable ride.

Technorati Tags: Stimulus and Other Failed Programs, Bankrupting America, American Recession, Rising Unemployment, Jobless Recovery that Doesn’t Recover, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice, Barack Hussein Obama the Amateur in Charge