
President Obama's top economic adviser Larry Summers is basing his prediction on the end of the recession on the number of Google searches for the term"economic depression."
From the Politico
Of all the statistics pouring into the White House every day, top economic adviser Larry Summers highlighted one Friday to make his case that the economic free-fall has ended.
The number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels, Summers said.
Search for the term were up four-fold when the recession deepened in the earlier part of the year, and the recent shift goes to show consumer confidence is higher, Summers told Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Summers continued the administration’s push-back against critics of President Barack Obama’s handling of the recession, defending the economic stimulus package against Republicans critics who have tried to paint the program as a failure because it hasn’t stemmed the unemployment rate.
“We pledged at the time the Recovery Act became law that some of the spending and tax effects would begin almost immediately.,” Summers said in prepared remarks. “We also noted that the impact of the Recovery Act would build up over time, peaking during 2010 with about 70 percent of the total stimulus provided in the first 18 months. Now, five months after the passage, we are on track to meet that timeline. “
Summers rattled off a list of accomplishments of the stimulus package:
“More than $43 billion in immediate tax relief has reached households and businesses. Another $64 billion has been channeled into the economy through aid to state and local governments, expansions in social programs, and spending on education, housing, and transportation projects. In addition to the amount that has already been paid out, another $120 billion in spending has been obligated by the federal government and is on track to begin working its way into the economy.”

As of the end of this June, seven of ten economic indicators/precictors favored by prognosticators and economists on Wall Street showed an uptick for the first time since the second-half of 2007.
And, of course, a positive public perception may be the biggest component in the overall equation.

Don’t forget that after the Crash of 1929, the market and all indicators surged. Then in 1932 they all crashed again and the Great Depression took hold until the war-mongering FDR saw arms production as the way to get industry going again and “backed the mule of Democracy across the bridge to war” as Garet Garrett put it so eloquently.
http://www.examiner.com/x-14753-Omaha-Libertarian-Examiner~y2009m7d6-The-Arsenal-of-Democracy

Re: Post 3;
If so, then it seems Mr. Bush 43 may have been following the very same game plan - but, unlike for Mr. Roosevelt, it apparently didn’t work out quite the same for the warmongering Mr. Bush. (???)
July 17 at 6:39 pm | #1 | Link
He seems to be thinking that the searches somehow reflect people’s thinking or “the mood of the proles.”
In a sense, he’s correct: the less obsessed people are with any issue as reflected in their searching for information about the issue does reflect the seeming lowering of the importance of the issue to people.
Maybe he’s googling the wrong phrase? In any case, it smells of examining chickens’ entrails for clues to the future.