I have, for a very long time, been very skeptical about every pronouncement of the good news about the "recovery" that seems to be around the corner each time a snippet of data comes out that political leaders grab on to to try to reassure an angry and frustrated citizenry. You can’t say that the economy is "good" or "getting better" when one in five Americans still does not have good paying work.

   And even the market euphoria that popped up here and there appears to be on very shaky ground, per The Wall Street Journal:

The only other time in 80 years that the Dow has fallen that far, that fast so early in an economic rebound was in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea to start the Korean War. Then, the Dow fell 13.6% in 31 days from peak to trough, according to a study done for The Wall Street Journal by Ned Davis Research. Stocks recovered in 1950 and remained in a bull market for another decade.

This spring, the stock decline has been blamed on things like fears of spreading debt woes in Europe and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, severe problems but somehow less bone-chilling than a Communist invasion. The fact that the market has proved so fragile has made even some optimistic analysts wonder whether the troubles might be deeper than people had believed.

"This correction has had more legs than we thought," says Tim Hayes, Ned Davis’s chief investment strategist.

   The troubles are deep.