We now join our recovery, already in progress....

Complete GDP data for the 4th quarter of 2009 isn't in yet, so this chart only shows three quarters for that year, but the signs are good. Of course, as usual, jobs are lagging, so many people fail to realize that the economy is in fact in a state of recovery.

Sadly, rumor has it that President Obama is poised to repeat the same mistake that FDR made in 1937, buckling to GOP pressure to cut Federal spending, a move which put the brakes on progress made by the New Deal in getting us out of the Great Depression and resulted in the 1937 recession, a mistake which I've touched upon before. (An economic boom is the time to curtail government spending and pay down the debt, not during a tepid recovery. This is basic material covered on, say, day 2 of an Economics 101 class.) We'll see what news is in store for us in the State of the Union Address tomorrow.