Not A Lot Of Good News

Rained out of gardening this afternoon so here I  am. I did pick the first pepper and first yellow squash however so all is not lost.

Not much good news today other than it appears BP has gained some control over the spilling oil. It's still early in the game though and I would pop the bubbly just yet. In spite of BP's best efforts, pictures of oil soaked wildlife are breaking into the mainstream media. There was a big picture of an oil soaked brown pelican on the front page of the AJC this morning and there are scores and scores of heart rendering pictures on the net.

Markets went South big time today on the weak jobs report and the falling Euro. Looking more and more like we are going to get our double dip recession. Retail sales are down and nearly 30 million Americans, who should be spending money, don't have jobs. In spite of the 41,000 private sector jobs added in May we are still shedding jobs on a whole since population is growing. Estimates are that 22 million new jobs have to be created before we are anywhere near full employment. One of the biggest tragedies is that our elected officials and especially the Senate just can't seem to grasp the difference in short term deficits and long term debt. Our problems are with long term debt and that can only be addressed with a robust economy. Short term deficit spending, to replace the missing consumer spending, is the only thing that will trigger any meaningful economic recovery. The only reason we aren't into the double dip now is the stimulus, which is 75% gone, and the near zero interest rates. Now with the pressure from the bad news on the Euro we should be back into a full recession before the summer is out. It is going to get very ugly out there since the deficit hawks are in control and nothing constructive is going to happen until after the fall elections, if then.