Recovery?  I am really perplexed by the inaction and incompetence in D.C. in even having the gall to claim anything about a recovery whatsoever.  THIS IS NOT A RECOVERY! This is a crisis and the mess is far from being cleaned up.  After almost $2 trillion has been borrowed, then loaned and spent, the economy is barely alive.  The life support it needs isn’t reaching consumers, PERIOD!  Mark my words: the economy will never recover unless people are shored up and able to buy again.

“Summer of Recovery?” NOT! “The economy was in a ditch and we are pushing it out.” NOT!  “The economy is headed in the right direction.” NOT!  “The Democrats will keep a majority in the House and Senate.” NOT!  Pile it on my plate and yours, too.  Oh, and add some incompetence gravy and a side of housing mess and hopelessness.  Tastes good, doesn’t it?  “Choke on it!”  That is what the chefs in the D.C. kitchen say.

I want to put this out there and have Frank Luntz poll it!  If we had a choice and a ballot item for an UP or DOWN VOTE, what would your answer be to the following?

Do you want the government (federal, state, local, etc.) to continue managing our money?  [Up Vote for Congress]

Do you want an Office of Homeland Financial Security to step in and hire the best executives in the world to oversee every single penny this government borrows and spends?  [Down Vote for Congress]

I’M SERIOUS.  Put it up on your sites!  Put it out there on radio and TV.  What do you think the outcome would be?  How about I predict it would be close to 100% giving a down vote to Congress.

Well, aside from that treat, I have to point out that I warned everyone the other shoes would drop and housing is just the beginning.  Who is listening?  Wall Street is for sure.  Housing numbers came in and look so abysmal, it seems like 1968 all over again (the year I was born).  But there is more to come.  Commercial properties and jumbo homes are headed for a wall too.  We just don’t hear about all those.

The reason why I wrote “The United States of Bankruptcy” wasn’t just to be prophetic, but getting the word out about what is really happening and how to fix it.  Just look at credit card interest rates getting hiked, banks not lending, and now 80 million people are deemed credit unworthy with scores below 650 and 55 million of them with scores below 600.

The economy will not and cannot recover with half of our consumer population unable to afford big-ticket items and just getting by on necessities.  Sure, companies are doing well for the most part, but they are selling most of their goods overseas.  Austerity measures around the world will quell that soon, too.  And what is going to force us right back down the hole and beat our brains out, like the “Whack-A-Mole” game is taxes.  Even if the Bush tax cuts remain, there are so many more taxes and social welfare programs hitting our pockets in 2011, we might as well abandon the ship.

Bill Gross and I were correct in the need for a consumer refinance program.  I cannot stress enough how enormous a boost it would be for everyone and every business.  Instead, the government just keeps putting money out there like somehow what has been proven to fail is going to work.  It is a recipe for more disaster, hopelessness, bankruptcy and on what we are choking to death.