Economic Recovery?

Two news items caught me by surprise yesterday. The first claimed that consumer mood is at a two-year high, while the other said the economy grew at 5.7% in the last quarter. It seems those who put out economic updates are either on the newly-legalized medical marijuana program in some states, or they're just trying to get a rise out of us (like the bankers and other Wall Street types have been doing).

So I got in my car and drove around within a one-mile radius of our working-class South Jersey home. I passed a strip mall where all stores but one (a barber shop) were permanently shuttered, three abandoned used-car dealerships, four gas stations that had gone out of business, two outlets of major drug retailers who've closed their doors (and one was at a prime spot, on the intersection of two, very busy roads, one leading to Atlantic City), and a partridge in a pear tree.

You walk into an Old Navy store, a Home Depot, a Victoria's Secret, or whatever, and you're likely to see more sales people than customers, like in Indian department stores, where half the staff watch customers like hawks so you don't steal anything, while the other half are there to see that the first half don't do the same - but, then, who watches the watchers?

WalMart's parking lot seems packed any time of day. And the liquor stores don't seem to be doing too shabbily, either. I guess if you drink yourself into a stupor, even the economy will look a healthy pink. Like the elephants. Oh, one creative Gujju gentleman rented an abandoned Pizza Hut, with its distinctive architecture, and converted it into a liquor store. It's named Liquor Hut.

I read that Star Bucks, Borders, Zales, and a whole bunch of other chains will be closing hundreds of stores across the country in 2010. Now whatever will New Yorkers and San Franciscans do when they want their iced caramel macchiatos (thanks, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality 2)? Heaven forbid they'd have to cross the road for their java if every block ceases to have its own Starbucks.

I've read that all these store closings are just the opening act for the real estate meltdown. The most recent shock was the developers defaulting on their 11,000 apartment Manhattan properties of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. Imagine defaulting on a $5.4 billion property.

In comparison, the losses suffered by nobodies like me on our most valuable asset - our home - seem laughably small. Why should I complain when my house has depreciated by only about $50,000 in two years? There are fire sales going on all over the country on homes. Properties are going at 50%-60% or more off from peak prices in places like Las Vegas, Denver, Miami, Phoenix, even San Francisco. Meanwhile, the ranks of unemployed and underemployed continue to swell. Tent cities are sprouting up everywhere.

The other day I was stopped at a red light in Philadelphia when a well-dressed white woman, probably in her late 50s or early sixties, came up to my car. She was holding a placard that said, "No home, no job. Please help," or something like that. She seemed embarrassed and almost apologetic, yet grateful, when I wound down the window and placed some money in her hand. This was hardly the first time it had happened to me, but it's always been black people or, occasionally, an emaciated and unshaven white guy who are out panhandling in that part of town. Now no one is exempted.

It's said 46 states may soon have to default on their financial obligations. Many have run out of money to pay unemployment. California, once touted as the world's tenth largest economy, leads the pack of failed states, under the able leadership of Conan the Barbarian.

So, tell me again, what was that recovery you were speaking of?