Every time I hear a politician or some boffin from the bowels of a bank vault say the worst is over, I cringe.   Bromides for the masses, as Marx might have said. Posturing for the pre-rinse cyclists.  Nothing but spin, in other words.  The hard facts are still very gloomy. Please look at the charts to the left (Canada is in the upper left corner, the US is bottom right). They track the current recession against what happened during the 1929 depression.  Obviously we're not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. 

These charts are a small sample of a series of analytics prepared by two economists writing for VOX.  H/t Troy Thompson for bringing them to our attention.

Yes, I wish I could also believe the 'we've reached bottom' folks -- or rather, as the economists like to say, 'the bottom is forming' -- but I think we are just at the *beginning* of a restructuring of the world economy and political power strucutres.

Media keep reporting the economy as the main story -- my fear has been, and continues to be, that it is 'not the thing in itself' but the catalyst for something else.  Or, to change metaphors, a sign, a symptom, and not the diagnosis.

Now that sounds too 'end of times', when what I really want to say is that change is afoot -- and change is not always a bad thing, but it is seldom a painless transition.

Bear in mind that the MSM has a vested interest in reporting as many "green shoots" as possible. Their advertising reveune has tanked, and CanWest in particular is staring down a $3 billion debt. So they need to try and spin the economy to the positive, in a type of "wag the dog" style, in order to save their own butts. If you want anything resembling a fairer and more objective view of the economy, go to the alternative media and blogs. We are not out of this yet, not by a long shot. And if we can only point to a few modest "green shoots" after the massive interventionist policies implemented and trillions of dollars thrown at the problem by the world's major economies, we are quite frankly in deep do-do.

Right on.  It's a good article, the VOX analysis.  Not entirely negative, but it has the ring of truth.  We should all read it.