This is the situation ON THE GROUND from an American

>> And on the surface green shoots are being shot everywhere.

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I live near a small town with a now 1/3 occupied industrial park as several auto suppliers bellied up and as I write one more idles next week. Another 130 insignificant jobs lost I suppose as Wall St doesn't care.

You could take your pick of five pizza places and now you can pick from two. Three places to sit down and just drink coffee and now there is one. Four decent eateries and now there are two. Three places to rent and buy videos and games and now only one in a grocery store. You need your car fixed? Oil changed? You must drive 20 miles since both garages bit the dust.

We had six landscaping companies in and around here and now just a few souls with mowers that might sell mulch too. The others died and sold their equipment, auctioned their nursery stock last fall.

Our area of the Interstate highway at noon on a weekday now looks like Sunday morning at 7 am used to. Boat dealerships gone, RV's are like what's that? Both hit the skids in 2007. Truck traffic extremely low. No worries of getting caught at RR crossings either, less trains by 70%.

Empty buildings growing, foreclosures and bankruptcy ramping up, jobs scarce as hen's teeth, thefts on the rise, broken promises-broken dreams and folks are excited about stocks.... gimmie a break. The landscape in the real world is littered with corpses without let up.

This is sad, this is tragic and this is what America is becoming step by step and most of us see no end to it. The losses are beyond the official numbers you can be sure. I've lost nothing material myself yet it hurts me like bloody hell to see my country struggle so.
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