Outlook 2012 | The US Economy - Jeff Thredgold / Tea Leaf

What we now call the Great Recession officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. It was the longest, the deepest, and the most painful recession since the Great Depression.

By my count, that suggests that the current U.S. economic expansion is now reaching the two-and-a-half year mark. The current expansion has been less than satisfying both statistically and emotionally, with major headwinds still in play involving weak residential and commercial real estate markets, uncomfortably high unemployment, major European financial risk, and elevated levels of anxiety about the direction of the federal government.

 The P.T. Barnum Bond Market - Rodney Johnson/HSDent (11/29/11)

The Financial Times ran a story about Italians being urged to personally buy Italian government bonds out of a sense of patriotism. Hmmm. This has been tried before, as the Japanese government ran an ad years ago portraying young women as preferring men who buy Japanese government bonds. I’m not sure either campaign was successful. The Italian government certainly convinced individuals to buy more government bonds over the last two days, but they did it the old fashioned way – by enticing them with money.

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A Truly-Less-Than "Super" Committee - Jeff Thredgold/Tea Leaf (11/22/11)

Portions of the supercommittee statement of failure…

“After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.”