As I geared up for this week\u2019s column, a variety of forces interfered with my peace of mind.\u00a0 I found myself perpetually starting on an idea only to find that another idea shot in from an unseen direction to wreak havoc on my concentration.\u00a0 I pondered this state of affairs for a while and realized that my mental state was in some sense reflecting the state of country and the economy as a whole.\u00a0 It was at this point that it seemed most prudent to take up blog space this week to rant about the many little things weighing on my mind and on the nation\u2019s recovery.<\/p>\n
Since this is going to be a rant, I\u2019ll excuse myself from the usual rule of trying to produce a logical flow and a clean narrative.\u00a0 Who knows perhaps it will work better.\u00a0 It may even make me feel better, but I doubt it.<\/p>\n
First let me point out that the state of the economy is hardly in recovery mode.\u00a0 A recent trip to a nearby mall left me feeling depressed and deeply concerned.\u00a0 The mall in question contains about 200 separate slots for storefronts.\u00a0 Despite being relatively upscale, it was, in my estimation, doing quite poorly.\u00a0 As I walked up and down in front of the various shops I noticed that a large number of storefronts were vacant. By the time this observation had wormed its way into my conscious mind I was conveniently at one end of the building.\u00a0 I decided to turn around and make a careful count of the vacancies.\u00a0 When I reached the other end, my tally was 18 store fronts boarded up and idle, corresponding to about a 9 percent vacancy.<\/p>\n
A short trip later found me at a strip mall a notch or two down the glamor ladder from my previous visit.\u00a0 Even this bastion of thriftiness was not left unmolested by this so-called recovery.\u00a0 Of the 30 storefronts, about 4 were vacant and the local RadioShack was sporting banners reading \u201cStore Closing!\u201d and \u201cEverything Must Go!\u201d, all in an attempt to lure shoppers in to take advantage of the liquidation.<\/p>\n
The next set of \u2018good news\u2019 came in the form of a seemingly never-ending set of statistics being pushed at my face, some correctly interpreted and worrisome, some poorly interpreted and annoying.<\/p>\n
On the worrisome front, all indications on the horizon showed that the April jobs numbers were going to be disappointing.\u00a0 This news comes hard on the heels of a March report that showed that job growth failed to match population growth. \u00a0It seems that period of time in which job creation was out-pacing population growth in the fall and early winter has evaporated and the new trend is the same old jobless recovery we've seen for the prior 5 years.<\/p>\n
In addition, both IMF Chairman Christine Lagarde and Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen and spoke at length of the risks that still face the economy in this post fiscal-crisis world at a joint conference at the Institute for New Economic Thinking<\/a> on May 6, 2015.\u00a0 Lagarde warned of continued distortions in the incentives for the financial markets that focus on short-term profits over sustainable gains. A few rays of sunshine did poke through from this discussion, including Yellen\u2019s assertion that improvements in the financial markets, mostly occurring before the start of the financial crisis in 2008, were mostly aimed at helping the poor<\/a>.\u00a0 But mostly it was the same type of \u2018doom and gloom\u2019 about stability, liquidity, and \u2018too big to fail\u2019 that we\u2019ve been hearing over the past 6 years.<\/p>\n On the poorly interpreted and annoying statistics front, society, as a whole, and journalists, in particular, can\u2019t seem to get over the hump in their understanding to realize that correlations in data don\u2019t imply causation \u2013 no matter how fervently they want it to.\u00a0 Just to frame the frustration I feel on this point consider the following two statistical statements.<\/p>\n