Are We In Recovery?

Last week John Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, spoke to bankers at a conference in Jackson Hole (wow, I bet my friends who are fly fishing guides on the Snake River got a little economic stimulus last week! Way to go guys!). At the conference Bernake stated, unequivocally, that our economy is now in recovery.

At the risk of hammering at this point a little too much, I keep wondering whether the recovery is for Wall Street or Main Street? And indeed, the business and economy reporter for the Seattle Times wrote a nice, short piece about jobs and recovery. Until the United States figures out how to create jobs, sufficient to employ the unemployed and sustain the job creation at a rate of 127,000 a month (to keep up with population growth) this so-called recovery isn't going to help those who are gazing at computer screens trying desperately to find jobs.

The promise of green jobs is going to take many many years. Throwing money at industries like the failed banking system hasn't helped, since they have not been on a hiring binge as they figure out how to increase interest rates on credit cards, over-draft fees, and pay huge bonuses and lobbying salaries.

Looking at what remains of our manufacturing sector is also sad. Boeing continues to threaten both local governments and its unions that it will pull jobs away from areas like Western Washington and send them overseas or to the south where they can bust the union, unless Boeing receives even more tax credits and a no strike clause in its union contracts. At least in Washington, small businesses that actually have to pay taxes and consumers who are hammered with one of the highest sales taxes in the nation, are already subsidizing the highly paid executives at Boeing and Microsoft. But they want to squeeze out even more, while the state has to cut and ax people off of Medicaid and other social safety net programs.

Something is very structurally wrong with our economy and unless we correct the course rather than band-aid it, we'll be talking about these unemployment numbers over and over during the next 12 months.

So, just whose recovery is this?