State of the Economy

What is the state of the economy? We are still getting mixed messages from indicators, but there are signs of hope. Unfortunately, Main Street appears to have lost patience with the economic strategies put forth by the Obama Administration, while Wall Street miraculously finds its way back to levels over 10,000. I get it, but many Americans struggling to pay bills and feed their families as a result of layoffs and underemployment, can’t really be expected to care that eight or more years went into destroying the economy. How then can we expect that one year would effectuate a complete economic turnaround.

With continued debates and discussions with my colleagues and my husband, it is apparent that the Obama administration has to pull a rabbit out of their hat – and fast. Whatever the next moves are, one of them should include a grandstanding, theatrical move that the American people can feel good about. I hate to see it come down to that, but everything that I am reading and seeing, points to the need for “show and prove” on the part of the administration. Perhaps by the time the spell wears off, the stimulus strategies will have begun to actualize. We will soon hear Obama’s State of the Union Speech, and thus the Administration’s spin on where we stand on these issues.

K. Reilly