Sorry, Our Economic ‘Recovery’ Is Tanking

The general consensus these days is that the economy is enjoying a steady if unspectacular recovery, writes Henry Blodget at Business Insider. After all, stocks and corporate profits are up and the unemployment rate is down. In a column headlined "Don't Mean To Be Rude, But The Economy Sucks," Blodget says conventional wisdom is wrong. Plenty of "key metrics" are off—inflation, housing prices, jobless claims—along with today's report of "pathetic" 1.8% growth in GDP.

That kind of growth "in the face of massive stimulus is the equivalent of your car sputtering down the highway at 45 miles per hour while you have the gas pedal floored," he writes. "You might be glad that the car hasn't broken down completely, but you certainly won't conclude that all is well." And yet that's exactly what people conclude about the recovery. Truth is, it's "not going well. It's going badly. And the recent signs suggest that it may be about to get worse—just as the Fed's latest emergency stimulus measure (QE2) begins to run out." (More economic recovery stories.)