Here, from Zero Hedge, are some graphs illustrating the ongoing failure that is the Obama Economic Recovery.

As ZH notes (his emphasis), this is

the worst in US history, having just dipped below the heretofore lowest on record.

This one shows the effervescent fluffiness of this failed recovery:

There are actually those who tout gains like this as meaningful (Federal Reserve Bank President Ben Bernanke among them*).  They speak of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or of the S&P 500, or of some other market index as proof of the efficacy of President Barack Obama’s policies.  The indices have been doing quite well; the DJIA is at a five year high, for instance.

The indices, though, are not the real economy.  They’re just a measure of how well investors like me have been doing; they have nothing at all to do with how poorly folks who actually work for a living—or who would like to work for a living—are doing.  And that real economy is what underlies those indices.  Heads up.

*Certainly, that’s a two-year old op-ed, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate he’s altered his views—not about the (ir)relevance of stock prices in assessing our recovery, and not about any of the several other misapprehensions he included in his piece (but which are the topics of other posts).