Summer of Recovery Dog Days

I haven't been checking in with Bill McBride's Calculated Risk much lately, so it was instructive just now to spend an hour on the blog and realize how uniformly dismal the economic news is. A quick sample of the gangrene shoots:

Moody's June Commercial Real Estate Price Index declined 4 percent.

The Philly Fed's Business Outlook Survey says that "after two months of slowing activity," regional manufacturing activity contracted in August, for the first time since July 2009

Back to half-million numbers on weekly initial unemployment claims, which are the highest since November 2009.

New Home Affordable Mortgage Program data show some home borrowers putting 80 percent of their income into debt service, rising rates of cancellations on mortgage modifications, and the HAMP program itself entering its death throes. (Good news for America, but not the kind of thing the administration wants to brag about.)

No improvement in state unemployment rates.

Things have gotten so slow that Wall Street traders are giving up coke for pot.

Note that, according to the White House itself, we have already enjoyed most of the benefits of the $787 billion ARRA Stimulus. These benefits seem to have consisted of making signs to tell people about the stimulus.

All this can only mean one thing: We need to spend even more on an even bigger, better stimulus, because it's always darkest before the dawn. Take it away, Dr. Pauly Krugnuts.