Some of the same spoilers that interrupted the recovery in 2010 and 2011 have emerged again, raising fears that the winter’s economic strength might dissipate in the spring.
In recent weeks, European bond yields have started climbing. In the United States and elsewhere, high oil prices have sapped spending power. American employers remain skittish about hiring new workers, and new claims for unemployment insurance have risen. And stocks have declined.
There is a “light recovery blowing in a spring wind” with “dark clouds on the horizon,” Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Thursday….
[i]Still, the breadth of the recent weakening of activity shows that the economy remains fragile, as is typical in the years following a financial crisis[/i]
There is nothing typical about this economy. And that is primarily due to the fact that nothing is being done to revive it. Trillions of dollars have been spent to prop up states and unions [stimulus, GM, Chrysler, Green Energy flops] while the EPA continues to wage out and out warfare on the energy industry in particular and industry in general. Environmental regulations are going to wreck the Coal industry [which accounts for ~45% of electricity generation] and that is going to send energy costs higher and makes us more uncompetitive than we are on the world stage.
Real Estate is in the tank because we won’t let the system rid itself of the huge overhang of inventory. Obamacare still looms over employment costs like a bad dream. Trillion dollar annual deficits stretch into the future with no end. Even the naive and foolish have to know the rapid expansion of government we have seen in the last 4 years can’t go on forever.
Other than that, what’s to stop the “recovery” that we have so enjoyed so much?