Government interference in the marketplace has hidden the true weakness of the U.S. economy, and the release of the census workers from their temporary jobs, underscored the reality of the ongoing recession, as 131,000 workers were laid off.
The so-called jobless recovery that never was, has caused consumer credit to drop for the fifth month in a row, this time by 0.7 percent in June, or $1.3 billion.
In April U.S. consumer credit plunged 6.4 percent, and in May it dropped another 2.6 percent.
The lack of job creation in the private sector continues to be the impetus behind consumers pulling back on going into debt, and there is nothing in the short term that indicates this will change; as a matter a fact it'll probably get a lot worse before it begins to turn around.
Picking and choosing the economy data to focus on no longer cuts it, as even at that it brought mixed outlooks, while those that understood knew it was far from mixed, but an outright sham as far as cherry picking what the media chose to emphasize when they reported.
Not only are payrolls weak, but the housing market is almost assuredly going to go into recession again, debt levels remain high, and we haven't even heard much lately about the projected disaster of commercial real estate for the second half of 2010, which could begin at any time, as far as focusing on the issue.
With a job market that could take years to turn around, and the same with housing and commercial real estate, one does have to ask what the optimism is all about.
I think we're going to find out the economic optimism is much ado about nothing.
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