Barack Obama has been president for 51 months, and America is still waiting for that change he told us to hope for. The latest economic indicators continue to point in the wrong direction: Durable-goods orders are falling, growth in factory output is sluggish and optimism is dissolving.
As I predicted last week, this week was frenetic in terms of companies reporting their quarterly earnings, economic data for both the United States and abroad and, of course, the second presidential debate. While there were some positives, the overall picture continues to be mixed, with the manufacturing economy slowing and concerns rising over the technology economy following weak results from Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices and Google Inc., to name a few. The domestic housing market continued to improve in September, but will the stronger-than-expected housing market continue?
Americans are still asking themselves, "where's the recovery?" The latest re- ports suggest the answer is nowhere in sight, as the present "recovery" is looking an awful lot like a recession.
Stocks on Wall Street and across Europe fell sharply Thursday as fears of a double-dip recession continued to grow.
The experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research say the Great Recession ended in June 2009. After that, it looked for a brief period as if there might be a surge of economic growth as an oppressed private sector fought to break free of the malaise. It hasn't happened, and the latest numbers are far from encouraging.
