The above figure shows the peculiar problem of this recession. The economic statistics keep falling short. The measurements are updated after the fact and show that things are worse than thought possible. In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen said, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."
As for those, like Barak Obama, who are now talking about a "glimmers of hope" and reasons for "optimism". I see nothing in the above to support that assessment. If anything, the fact that revisions keep plunging to the downside says that the statisticians still haven't got a handle on how bad this recession/depression is becoming. Things have fallen off a cliff and other than the dead cat bounce in the stock market, there really is no indication of a "bottom" in sight.
Don't get me wrong. I want a bottom. I want a recovery. I want policy makers and economists to find solid footing and guide us out of this mess. But I find the reassuring words from Obama this week to be truly frightening. I lived through the Vietnam War error where the generals kept assuring the nation that they were making "progress", that they had "turned a corner", that there was "light at the end of the tunnel". This became a macabre theatre of the absurd when the "facts on the ground" kept showing the official pronouncements to be a lie. Nobody should have to live through that kind of official obfuscation again. But sadly, that is what I'm seeing.
The graphic is from Mark Thoma's Economist's View.
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