Can America get out of its economic tailspin?

Spengler, the bad news guy, delivers more bad news. For both major political parties in the U.S. and for the American people. He used to work on Wall Street. I think his views are worth considering. Read the whole thing. A few excerpts:

Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination and then the presidency by offering the same program that Peter Pan gave the Darling children: Close your eyes, think happy thoughts, and you will be able to fly. "Yes we can" in the meantime has changed to "No he can't," as America lost five million jobs in 2009 and its effective unemployment rate, including so-called long-term discouraged workers, rose to 22%, a level unseen since the Great Depression. . .

America is the world's most successful state, and the one with the greatest longevity in its present constitutional form. But neither of the major parties is presently capable of governing it. The Republicans have been hoping that rage against Obama's failed economic policies would carry the party through the November congressional elections. But it is entirely conceivable that the Obama presidency will implode as quickly as the Obama campaign metastasized during the 2008 primaries, and that the electorate will call the Republicans' bluff.

Americans understood well enough in early 2008 that the traditional leadership of both parties had led them into a dead-end. . . .

Obama appealed to the voters' bottom-dollar hope that a new face in the White House would reverse the tide of misery. He did not have to offer specific promises: he only needed to give the voters the opportunity to kid themselves, which they were eager to do considering the unpleasant taste of the alternative. . .

Americans need to be told that they will need to invest before they can consume, and that the cure will take years rather than months to take effect. It's not a happy message, and no one in politics is willing to deliver it - if indeed anyone in politics understands it.

He offers some other specific suggestions for making painful adjustments to recover from the end of a 25-year cycle of wealth creation. "Not just a dip in the business cycle".

Another unsettling bit of information about the economy of the Western world (which may have come from an earlier Spengler column) is that the inflation of home prices in California came in part because people in Europe saw California real estate as one of their few options for investment. The western world has been living in a financial Hollywood fantasy.