Green shoots.

Not really. Here's a glimpse of business as usual:

The economy is growing due to unprecedented deficit spending by the government, fraudulent accounting by the Wall Street banks, the Federal Reserve buying $1.5 trillion of toxic mortgage “assets” from their Wall Street owners, various home buyer and auto tax credits and gimmick programs, and Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA accumulating taxpayer loses [sic] so morons can continue to purchase houses.

* * * * [big snip]

The figure of 15 million unemployed reported by the government and regurgitated by the corporate media is one of the biggest lies in the history of lies. The real figure is 30 million . . . .

* * * *

. . . We’ve degenerated from a productive goods producing society to a consumption based, debt fueled society. This is a classic late stage trait of declining empires. Rome and Britain before us experienced similar declines.

The most damning facts that can be garnered from the BLS data relate to how we’ve become a nation of bankers, real estate agents, accountants, lawyers, tax specialists, and fast food fry cooks. Manufacturing jobs have dropped from 25% of all jobs in 1970 to less than 9% today. Jobs in the spreadsheet generating, credit default swap creating, subprime mortgage pushing, frivolous lawsuit filing, tax evasion sector of the economy went from 12% in 1970 to 19% today.

The misinformation and lies will continue. . . .

* * * *

The well paying goods producing jobs are never coming back. American manufacturing jobs have been shifted overseas for more than two decades by corporate America. . . . What has happened to the American middle class was not an accident. The wealth of the country has been pillaged by an elite group at the very top of the economic food chain, who were able to reap the rewards of globalization (outsourcing American jobs), manipulate the debt based financial system through synthetic fraud products, and avoid taxes by hiring thousands of lawyers, accountants and tax consultants.

Commenter Kreditanstalt pours a little cold water on the "elite group" manipulators idea:

Not all strictly true. Americans, with their high salaries, tax rates, social welfare expenses and overregulation are unable to compete with more nimble, lower-cost producers.

There are only two alternatives: either you build a closed economy, start socialist planning, raise tariffs and erect barriers, or you admit that lower living standards are a necessity if the nation is to become internationally competitive again.

And Mark Noonan has a practical plan (that may prevent a permanent slide into third world status):

An excellent post, but one should not get too "evil corporations and rich people did it" about this. I work for a major corporation and I can attest that the people running the show are too stupid to carry off something like this deliberately. Its just one of those [things] which happens when dimwits are left in charge for too long. A few, like Soros and such, do play a deliberate roll in looting the middle class, but most of them are just ill-educated cretins who are deathly afraid of losing their place at the trough...and so just follow the herd.

The cure will be both easy and hard - easy because it really just means taking away the taxes and regulations which hamper the domestic making, mining and growing of things - hard because the aforementioned dimwits will be losing their place at the trough, and thus will fight long and hard against reform. But it can be done - and it will be done, I believe. I do think that the average American has finally had quite enough of this.

Quite enough. Witness Tea Party unhappiness over lackluster Republican performance during the hands-across-the-aisle orgy in the recent lame duck session. I'd say patience is about gone. Mark Steyn this week on Rush's show observed that we have actual troops on the ground in Afghanistan [pursuing vague, open-ended strategic goals} but the Dems made it one of their priorities during the lame duck session to the vital matter of opening the military services to overt homosexuals.

For too many decades we assumed loyalty and competence on the part of our leaders but the photo of our anti-American president bowing to a God damn Saudi was just the perfect visual proof of the utter stupidity of our assumption. Whatever game plan Obama and the leftists are following it didn't spring out of any domestic source. More likely some messenger ran across the border with Mexico and carried it to the White House in a forked stick.

"Dude, Where's My Job." By Jim Quinn, Zero Hedge, 12/29/10.