My Comments: OK, so it’s still Thanksgiving! Tell that to the folks running to the mall to participate in Black Friday. For me, that’s an economic phenomenon that helps justify my blog post today. After all, this is GOOD NEWS, news that we can be THANKFUL for, even if it is about economics, that nasty topic.

Believe it or not, we ARE returning to normal. At least as far as the economy is concerned. In a few years, we’ll all be wondering what all the fuss was about. Just as we wondered what all the fuss was about following the many periods of hysteria in our history. As humans we have a strong tendency to remember the good and forget the bad.

See you next week!

By Matthew Yglesias | Posted Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2012

Jed Graham at Investors Business Daily gives us a fact you don’t hear much about from Washington’s chorus of deficit scolds, the deficit is already going down at a very fast pace—the fastest rate since World War II demobilization.
This is the flipside of the huge increases in the deficit that were associated with the recession. An economic downturn activates a lot of “automatic stabilizers”—falling tax revenue and higher payouts for safety net programs. We also had the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Those rising deficits were used to sow a lot of panic, but their natural flipside is that as the economy strengthens and ARRA fades out the deficit falls rapidly. Throw in the spending cuts House Republicans got the White House to agree to last year, and you’ve got pretty rapid federal deleveraging.
I’d say that’s a net minus for the economy. But it’s something you’d think the budget hawk crowd would be cheering. But instead they’re sowing further panic about the “fiscal cliff.”