President Soetoro has announced he wants to investigate oil speculation under the assumption that it will threaten the US recovery more than any other speculation taking place currently. If you are aware of the Silver manipulation scandal this action is just a smoke screen for the Presidents hope of appearing like he cares about economy. As posted here on Calibrated Confidence previously, the President took a remarkable number of Golf Trips during the BP Oil Spill and managed to find time for picking a college bracket only weeks before having to debate Republics in the shadow of a government shutdown. In the spirit of finding the truth in the details, let us look at how far along this recovery is from the year prior to the official recession period.
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| Source: BLS.gov |
Consumers were leveraged to the tilt and this was the focus point for a great period of time in the midst of the crash. News stations reported that consumers were spending beyond their means, using home owners equity as income and spending it immediately on big screen televisions, blackberry's and trucks. Consumers have experienced a steady growth in income and used that income in a correlated motion to the growth in their expenditures. The year prior to the official recession consumers has roughly $2.5Tn in outstanding credit and about $900Bn in revolving credit. Now, two years after the official end to the recession consumers have about $2.4Tn in outstanding credit and $800Bn in revolving credit. So since the recession US consumers have increased their income and expenditures in a steady continuous fashion while maintaining near equal credit levels. With almost 16% of the country unemployed, this would mean a more focus group of citizens are earning more and spending more to maintain the constant growth the graphs for the St. Louis Fed show. 
