WELCOME TO THE RECOVERY - AT 6:22 P.M. ET:    See all those vacant stores?  Hear of friends who suddenly close businesses?  All the administration's yapping about the "recovery," and all the artificial profits on Wall Street can't counteract the reality of the economy, as The New York Times reports:

Many small and midsize American businesses are still struggling to secure bank loans, impeding their expansion plans and constraining overall economic growth, even as the country tentatively rises from its recessionary depths.

Most banks expect their lending standards to remain tighter than the levels of the last decade until at least the middle of 2010, according to a survey of senior loan officers conducted by the Federal Reserve Board.

The enduring credit squeeze appears to reflect an aversion to risk among lenders confronting great uncertainty about the economy rather than any lingering effects of the panic that gripped financial markets last fall, after the collapse of the investment banking giant Lehman Brothers.

You can be sure that the powers that be will be pressuring banks to loosen up just before next year's midterm elections.  If that happens, we may see some magical, if temporary, improvement in the economy, just as last year we saw some magical collapse right before the election.  Hmm.

“It’s quite significant, because small businesses generate significant job growth,” said Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs. “And small businesses rely more on bank financing, whereas large businesses have the alternative of raising money in the capital markets.”

COMMENT:  We are far from out of the woods, and new, crazed ideas, coming from liberal Democrats in Washington would have the federal government spend trillions more.

The issue is not simply a recovery in the next few years, but what will happen to America in the next 30 years, with this overwhelming debt that the Obama administration and its congressional allies are building up.

October 12, 2009