Bob Herbert makes a point that I’ve been making repeatedly for many, many months:

Those who think some kind of robust recovery is hiding around the corner, just waiting to spring a pleasant surprise on us, are deluded. Too many families and individuals are tapped out. They’re struggling from week to week and month to month just to meet the necessities of housing, food and energy costs. Those crazed, debt-driven buying sprees that held the economy aloft for so long are over.

   Delusion is the right word to use. Many of the same "experts" who forecasted economic wonders in the past just don’t live in the real world of average people.

   Do not believe in the stock markets–the rise in stocks is another short-term bubble that will deflate again, I’m guessing by the end of the year.

   States and cities are going to continue to cut deeply–and jobs will go first:

California, New York and other states are showing many of the same signs of debt overload that recently took Greece to the brink — budgets that will not balance, accounting that masks debt, the use of derivatives to plug holes, and armies of retired public workers who are counting on benefits that are proving harder and harder to pay.

    Savings rates are going down again, after a short blip upward. Why? Well, if millions of people are out of work for months and there is no credit left, why would anyone think that the savings rate would go up?

    This is a long-term crisis. And the end is not near.