Thank you, js. When I first saw this thread yesterday I started writing a really nasty response, then decided against posting it. Suffice it to say I'm sick and tired of all the "everything is hunky dory" people, starting with the man on top (whom I voted for twice, incidentally, but only because I felt the alternatives both times were worse).
Maybe the recent rate cuts staved off the inevitable a bit longer but will make the eventual contraction worse. A lot of the fundamentals in both the US and world economy point to a disaster in the making. This has been discussed ad infinitum in a couple of threads here in the last few months. I don't know anybody who isn't struggling. By most measures my generation is doing worse than that of my parents. Believe me, nobody will gloat when the US goes under, least of all me. It's the inevitable price we'll be paying for at least 50 years of increasingly short-sighted leadership, but it's not a good thing.
It's also no surprise there's "growth". In fact, I'm suprised it's not even higher. The way the dollar is deflating their could be dollar growth of the GDP even if we were in the midst of a major recession. Recession? Heck, the ways things look I'd say we're already in, if not close to, a depression. I don't remember things looking this bad in my entire life. It's the fundamentals again I'm talking about, not a bunch of numbers like GDP or the DJIA. The infrastructure is crumbling, the economy is mostly based on crap, low-skilled service jobs, the real-estate market is still suffering overpricing due to the after effects of years of rampant speculation, that great experiment called suburbia is close to entering failure mode. The government can't get its act together and spends more than it brings in. So do most individuals for that matter, borrowing every penny in equity to finance a lifestyle well beyond their means. We're near the point where everyone has to cash their chips in. Many will find they have a negative net worth. The end game to this isn't going to be pretty. I wish our leaders would have the backbone to tell the general public the truth but I guess pigs will fly before then.