2010 - "Lick our Wounds" year
2011 - 3-4% GDP growth
Congress begins retiring unused TARP (if not doled out to citizens) in near future. Consumer hears that bail-out money they once thought was spent and unrecoverable is now being retired, deficit predictions begin to fall, and consumer starts to get confidence back. Although confidence is rising slowly, businesses see sales strengthening, leading to more productivity. Eventually, they begin filling some of the downsized positions.
Manufacturing is the key to a sustained recovery. The weak US dollar plays a big role. But also driving the cost of health care* and other items down for the business and worker will go a long way to making us competitive on the global manufacturing market. The recovery will likely not be a new asset bubble, but a long protracted and shallow sloped recovery. We are likely to deal with the bond market rolling over, but many are already predicting and preparing for that.
* We can argue all we want about who is providing the health insurance: private or public. but Japana dn China are trouncing us on manufacturing. Their governments heavily or fully subsidize the costs of health care so the businesses and workers don't have to deal with it. Those government rely heavily on sales and export taxes from manufacturing, not income and property taxes. So the more they feed back into the businesses, the more sales and export taxes they collect. Kind of a symbiotic relationship between private business and government that would make most American sick. But they're making huge private money off of it.
Or, I could be completely full of crap. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
