[sailaway21]

America will never have a strong dollar again and the beginning of the end was NAFTA. Once again rick displays that his economic knowledge begins and ends with the "shift-4" key of his computer. Either of those two assumptions are preposterous on the face of it and it's hardly worth explaing why to someone not listening.

That housing markets are in disarray and starts at a sixteen year low just might have something to do with the fact that there is already a tremendous over supply of new, uninhabited houses on the market. But then, Rick has always thought that the economy begins and ends with housing. It may be a news flash to Rick but most people only need one house. That's a fairly inelastic demand most of the time. Steady perhaps, but not elastic.

Interesting factors that make the relative strength of the economy impressive: Crude Oil over $100 a barrel-can't imagine how that would effect the largest industrial economy in the world. There are two wars going on. Unemployment is at historic lows. Don't bother preaching to me your version of the unemployment numbers; I live in Michigan which leads the nation and we're at 7%, a very low number historically speaking. People are leaving Michigan for work elsewhere and that's the good news; there is work elsewhere. In the meantime, the rest of us in Michigan continue to get up and go to work even though the auto industry is in the dumps and has been.

Given all those factors, and the housing turmoil, it's amazing the economy has done so well. Maybe the American economy is just a little bit more resilient than Rick imagines, and we know he has a fertile imagination.

The economy is bigger and more complex than anyone can understand or even imagine. The only thing that we're really good at is saying what it did six months ago and, even then, our impressions are subject to revision. That Rick continues, inexhaustably, to focus on his travails in the Florida condo market reminds one mostly of a welfare queen confronted with an empty Cheese-Doodles rack at the 7-11. That I persist in answering him doesn't say much for me either.