Where is the US economy headed?

Get ready for a load of bumpersticker posts.

If it werent for the quote button, spurt would have nothing to say

Hear, hear! He certainly wins the award for vacuous posts.

Except for the "you are an idiot" comment nothing else in your post made any sense.

You're spot on! Americans are buying homes and cars at increasing levels, even as consumer confidence seems to waiver. Factory production is also increasing. Poor Americans!

Yeah, Cice, maybe there is cause for a little bit of optimism regarding the economy. The Dow and S&P rose by double digits in the 1Q. But very little is trickling down to Joe Sixpack. And corporations are wary of investing; other then investing in buying other companies rather than creating new jobs. I foresee the notion of "synergy" making a comeback.
Obama once again made the pitch for infrastructure investment. It will not gain any traction, I fear.
I spent a little time today wandering through the results of a google search of "drought 2013." Our late-winter snowfalls probably have caused that story to totally disappear from the mainstream media. The various agencies which focus on the subject show a troubling situation. Some pretty scary maps.
Perhaps one of you could post the map of drought conditions.

Part of the reason for the stock market rise is the unhealthy state of the bond markets and the abnormally low interests rates that prevail. Money market funds and bank deposits get virtually nothing, andf in real terms, lose money.

These are not favorable indicators for our economy, and their primary cause is the extraordinary rise in our debt and the even more extraordinary future increases that will be the inevitavble consequences of our expanded entitlement programs as the boomer generation retires. The Federal debt is now such that the government sorely needs continued low interest rates. The obedient Fed is providing them and betting that it can painlessly withdraw from Federal Debt purchases and other measures to ensure cheap money, but that is uncharted territory for them and for us.

These, plus the increasingly difficult problem of predicting accurately the continuing increase of even more intrusive Federal regulations from our new "progressive" government are what is keeping all the corporate cash on the sidelines. No one is investing in our economy because no one trusts the actions of an increasingly intrusive government that wishes to pick the economic winners and losers itself, instead of letting natural market forces and competition do that in a way that enriches everyone (though unequally).

The price of government enforced equality is our freedom and our wealth: the result is damn little equality.

Capitalism hates uncertainty, and our broken political system combined with our broken markets assures that we have loads of it. We are in a death spiral.

You wish.

I thought that it defined it.

I can't quibble with your 1st paragraph, George. I was a big fan of QE and the low interest rates. I think that, absent that government action, the housing market and the market for big ticket items would have stayed stagnant. There obviously was a cost to savers (near 0% interest rates) and the program should be phased out. I think that there is some movement in that direction within the Fed.
I disagree with you on the thoughts in your other two paragraphs.

That was then. We still see continuing Fed action to keep interest rates low. Why?

Why with so much corporate cash in the sidlines is so little of it being invested. Do you have an alternative explanation for this fact?

Why is our recovery so unusually slow? Why is unemployment so stubbornly high? Could it be that the cumulative effects of our growing entitlements have reduced the incentived for work and contributed to the unusual inflexibility of our labor markets - something a bit unusual for us.

These same issues are increasingly noted by a growing number of economists as an explanation of the difference between recovering and stagnant economies in Europe. What makes them untrue when applied here?

Well sure some entitlements can play a negative role but I bet that you are unable to see any negative roles that capitalism plays are you?

You are correct. I can see many flaws and transient errors in capitalistic economic operations, but none that can explain the current issues I noted. Perhaps you could enlighten me.

Are you being serious? OK I am willing to bet that you are a little bit of what you have been taught not to be.
You are a liberal, progressive, conservative just like the rest of us but yet you have your own distinctive differences. Try and brake away from the chains of sociological currents the best that you can and be a free thinker.

I'm being very serious. You appear to be evading a fairly clear question relating to some fairly broad but unsupported assertions you made.

Further, I believe that I am indeed a relatively free thinker. My father was a (relatively conservative) Democrat Congressman for 20 years. I had a Jesuit education and then did a career as a Naval Aviator, getting a PhD in science along the way, and now run an engineering & science consulting business. I'm not stuck in anyone's mold except perhaps my own.

I am not suggesting that you are stuck in anyone's mold but rather many peoples mold that make up the sociological currents that we are all molded by.

Wow, you love to brag. How many times are you going unload that crap.

Are you suggesting that one can not have an excellent education and also be able to fly a huge jet into a building thinking that when he comes through the other side that he will have 72 virgins waiting for him?

What makes you so sure that someone like this would be unable to be a neurosurgeon? Is this something that you are taught in college?

Well you suggested this;

That implies that in your view I am perhaps more in the grip of other currents than you see yourself to be.

In any event what I am seriously interested in here is just what is it you see in the normal operation of capitalism that accounts for our current very unusually slow recovery from an economic recession; our persistent lack of investment by amply funded entrepreneurs despite unusually poor returns on cash; and our partly resultant sustained high unemployment?

Similarly those symptoms are also widely observed throughhout Europe and they are worst in those countries with combinations of high public debt, very restrictive and inflexible labor markets; and very genberous social welfare schemes which produce readily eneumerable disincentives for wortk; and least in countries with lower debt, less restrictive labor m,arkets and very careful management of social welfare programs precisely to avoid, where possible, disincentives for work. What alternative explanation do you have for this difference.