I'm an engineer, and I am BLOWN AWAY by all the conversations I have with people who seem to think manufacturing isn't important. Imagine what would happen if Boeing went out of business? I live in Seattle, and every middle class person I know is either a Boeing or Microsoft employee. Manfacturing results in economic strength. Look at the countries where manufacturing has gone to? China and India are experiencing unprecedented wealth because everything the world has is made there.

What makes America powerful? Not because we're full of apple pie and good at baseball. America was powerful because after world war 2 we were the only nation left in the world which had substantial industry left. ALL THE OTHER INDUSTRIAL NATIONS HAD BEEN BOMBED BACK TO THE STONE AGE. The world's products were all made here = rich ass america.

Maybe after everyone starves for a few years, labor costs fall to almost nothing and the nation realizes how desprately we NEED factories industry will come back. At this point I'll probably open a factory and give a job to the unemployed masses, and they'll be happy for the minimum wage I pay them.

I mean, that or i'll end up at McDonalds serving the rich chinese and indians who buy up all our real estate if the economy dosen't recover.

I'm pessimistic. The meddling the Obama people have been doing in the economy to date has been bad (and it won't be long before Congress meddles, as it has with Government Motors already), the new proposed reforms look to be worse (capitalization requirements are good and I had thought of these before hearing about them because I thought back to the S&L failures, but breakup of “too big to fail” companies is bad and harmonizing regulations with Europe smacks of upward ratcheting of regulations and of more intervention and command-and-control direction — yuck — as well as an earlier-than-previously-foreseen attack on scapegoats like offshore tax havens [and as we see already, hedge funds]). Note also that the Obama team and Treasury is filled with banking and financing insiders and to date what has taken place is not necessarily “reform” but a government-managed-and-even-encouraged consolidation of the sector by and on behalf of the favored few.

I suspect Roubini is correct that this is just a pause with perhaps a slight short upward move before things get worse.

Note that the stimulus measure yielded not 3.5 million new or saved jobs, but only 150,000 jobs to date.

Long term? Inflation, could happen earlier than suspected if the Obama team does it to get out of the slump plus tries monetizing the federal debt, or also if his group rushes to try to manage inflation as an opiate for the masses (“small, manageable” inflation is an economic “lubricant” and psychological-and-economic booster or “tonic,” the theory goes — could be easy for these people to over-inflate by mistake)

We have allowed corporate banking to destroy our country through leveraged buyouts, WTO, NAFTA and other tools which capitalized the very wealthy, while destroying the assets and careers of those of modest means. Until the banking system can be re-regulated and controlled in a meaningful and productive way, all other efforts will amount to attempting to rebuild a house that is still on fire.