I wrote a story in this morning’s paper on a survey that showed pervasive pessimism among American consumers about their economic situation.

71 per cent told AlixPartners, a business consulting group, that they were either worse off or in the same place as they were in May 2009 – and let’s remember that at the time the US economy was shrinking and the private sector was not generating jobs as it is now, albeit slowly, but was losing more than 300,000 positions per month.

The dispiriting survey by Alix caught my attention because it confirms that recovery is eluding most Americans, who are suffering from high unemployment and overleveraged household balance sheets. And the implications of this are huge: consumers are in no position to power the recovery once government stimulus stops later this year. Read more