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Our Perspective:

Continued bad news that structural unemployment in this country remains well over 8% masks even worse news, because the workers who stopped looking for a job also stop buying houses amid a double dip in real-estate values. Some economists predict a triple dip, in light of the foreclosure overhang.

At the state and municipal level, where budgets must be balanced, reduced services, layoffs and tax hikes are inevitably becoming the norm. Public pension promises cannot be kept unless significant modification in funding policies, contributions, and benefits can be achieved, and that includes Social Security and especially Medicare.

The Federal Reserve may talk of the recession giving way to recovery, but the man on the street knows differently. Today's households are on a strict financial diet because they no longer can spend money they don't have. Home equity and rising stock portfolios as a source of ready cash are a relic of the past.  Looking ahead, one foresees a lowered standard of living due to debt de-leveraging and tax increases. Will there be revenue growth without a conceptual shift away from these failed methods? We think it highly unlikely.

Will there be another downturn? The stock market rallied in the first quarter 2012, but there is ample precedent for a downturn in an election year.  Sluggish GDP performance, job growth that is too tiny to prevent further increases in the unemployment rate, layoffs, and firms still reluctant to hire make it tough to maintain long-term confidence that America can be rebuilt and more jobs can be created. This is especially so since consumer spending will decline as a portion of GDP for many years to come. Add to this dilemma the Middle East social cauldron and the foecast for our federal debt only gets worse.

Entitlement programs of indefinite duration, supported by borrowed money, will increase the staggering national deficit and keep us on a frightful path to eventual decline and disorder, without a brisk change in course.

GLOBAL AND NATIONAL REALITIES OF DEEP CONCERN:

OLD---------------------------->        NEW

Leadership-------------------->    Blame Shifting

Transparency----------------->     Dodgeball

Housing Bubble-------------->     Government Bubble

Bailouts----------------------->    Tax Hikes

War on Terror ---------------->    Mid East Civil War

Personal Responsibility ----->     Strategic Defaults

US Bond Rating-------------->     Fiscal Emergency

Public Pensions -------------->     Public Tensions

Quantitative easing ---------->    Dollar wheezing

Recovery---------------------->    Wreckovery

Freakonomics----------------->    Bleakonomics

Bottom Up Effort ------------->    Top Down Edict

Loss of Security--------------->    Loss of Freedom

To protect and uphold our nation's core values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we must acknowledge this period as one of extraordinary challenge. Despite the financial scandals of Wall Street, the policy missteps of Washington, inflationary dangers from money being printed by the Fed, in spite of severe global political unrest and instability, we must each behave in a responsible manner in our personal and professional lives, so as to do our part for preserving national heritage and keeping our country as the world's beacon of freedom.  We can follow no other path, if we are to avoid descent into a morass from which no exit is possible.