What are Obama's 29 Czars and their 1200 patronage workers going to do during his second term besides collect a pay check and go golfing all the time with '57 states'?   I'd love one of you Obama supporters to describe any work they have actually done or for that matter one thing any  of them have done...   Quick, can you name 3 of them?

LOL...   here is the VERY FIRST place we can cut...  Fire all 1200 of the patronage workers and the 29 Czars...

Mr. Mirhaydari, I object to the first line in your article, "the recession ended in the middle of 2009".  Either you have someone paying for your food, sundries, gasoline and the like, or you are REALLY out of touch with Americans.  The recession is progressively worsening and the Middle Class is shrinking.  I have been to Third World countries and have noticed there is no middle class, only the poor and the rich.  This is what is happening to the United States of America.

Remember the date:

August 28, 2013 - the Middle Class Rights March on Washington D.C. will change everything!

I rough in the 2% payroll tax hike to result in just shy of $200 billion worth of contraction in domestic spending that we should see in Q1 2013.  That's about 1.5% of gdp and I don't think traders are factoring that in to thier recent buying spree.  (Either that or it's all just a pump and dump scheme)  Either way, once those numbers get baked into the data (which is emminent), the bears will come out to play.  Get ready for 2-3 months worth of red.

Still though, I'm a firm believer in the laws of supply and demand which has controlled the markets since the beginning of civilization.  Everything I look at tells me we are still in the 1st half of a very long, slow recovery which began in 2009.  Once all the numbers from the new fiscal reality are in effect, all that happens is we resume growth from a new baseline.  That baseline sets everything back about 12 months.  So, as I've been saying, a fair price for the S&P is somewhere between 1375 and 1400, with around 5% growth from there by the end of 2013. 

The recovery is not over, just shoved backwards a year.  That's why I remain conservative unless I see a substantial pullback in the markets.

The faster we get into a recession or depression, the faster the Secular Progressives can get rid of the Constitution and all it stands for.  We are on the razor's edge of a very steep dive into a country dominated by "progress".   Only the progress isn't for the average person.   This is just the beginning.

Remember the writing on the wall:  "Everyone is equal", painted over by "Some are more equal than others".

Just about any and all of the recovery from 2009 was due to two to three things.  Easy money policies from the FED propping up prices while deflating currency values, financials and fanny/freddie not foreclosing on people when they should have to allow the housing market to really correct.  And massive stimulus spending by the government.  Both in their stimulus bills, and the huge increase from Bush Era budgets as yearly spending.  All those things did was mask the problems and delay it from appearing.  You can never 'beat' market forces with this type of outside intervention.  Our economy is built on sand and debt and it's finally starting to show through no matter how much spending the government does.

Unfortunatly I believe the response will be 'spend more', and that's the exact wrong thing we need to do.

Pull back from recovery? When was there a recovery?

There certainly has been no real recovery in the labor market or in wage earnings.

The ONLY reason the unemployment numbers are below 10% is still due to millions permanetley giving up and not being counted. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Oh, I know because the media refuses to talk about the facts.

In the meantime, wages have been stagnant while basic costs of living have skyrocketed. Food, gas, electricity, healthcare have all gone up while wages have been stagnant or lowering due to less working hours.