New report says US hasn’t seen expected ‘Great Recovery’ as economy continues to fall short

LOS ANGELES — The expected U.S. “Great Recovery” hasn’t materialized and the economy has fallen short of even normal growth, according to a forecast released Wednesday.

No freaking kidding.

I love how they just say expected in the headline and in the first sentence, as though it were an objective fact that this recovery was on the way, the commonest of common knowledge, something we all took for granted. From the beginning of the article to its end there is never any mention of who exactly was expecting this recovery to happen. Everybody was! We were all certain together that recovery was on the way, nourished by the spending cuts and tax cuts that every last one of us agreed were absolutely sure to do the job! And now we are all equally flummoxed together by this startling disappointment!

Of course, if this expectation had been mostly a delusion of the advocates of a particular partisan theory of how the economy works, it might be a good idea for people to take note, and maybe trust these folks’ advice on the economy a little less in the future. But fortunately that’s not an issue here, unh-unh! The recovery was simply expected and there are no lessons to be drawn here, none at all, about the folly of believing whatever somebody tells you just because it says on his business card that he’s an expert.

Why, look. It’s an AP story! Who’d’ve guessed!