Good News, Right?

On the wire: "The Labor Department reported the nation's unemployment rate declined to 6.2 percent in July from 6.4 percent in the previous month." But before you get excited, read the next sentence:

The figure was slightly better than analysts' estimates, but much of the drop came from 470,000 disenchanted people who abandoned job searches.

(# people actively seeking work)/(#people in the labor force),

AB

Juicing the Growth Rate

General Glut makes an interesting point here: by the General's calculations, without the extra $40 billion in military spending, the projected growth rate for this year would be under 1%.

AB

I've been really remiss about posting over here, as I've been just trying to get past the Blogathon and setting up a few other groups blogs. But now I have no such excuses, and although still somewhat sleep-deprived, I wanted to initiate some discussion over here on the state of the recovery.

This morning, over at Wampum, I expressed some concern regarding two factors, state budget deficits and spiking natural gas prices, which I think may have an impact upon the strength, or even the existence, of the pending economic recovery. I expect that others out there have additional concerns. This weekend, while digging back in the 1991 archives, I noticed a lot of blame being directed at the purported tight lending environment, and I recall Matt S. asserting a similar argument in my old Wampum comments many months back.

Anyone care to add issues the think may derail the recovery, as well as ways the current administration, or a future Democratic one, may avert such a problem?