There is an old saying:  “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and that is precisely the situation we find ourselves in economically.  From most statistics, the US is king of the large, developed economies and yet, we are staring at one of the weakest economic recoveries in history. The Chinese refer to us as economic has-beens and soon-to-be military has-beens.  In an article in the May 7th, 2012 issue of Newsweek the following statistics were available:, 4.05 million jobs have been created in the US since 2010, and there has been a 34% increase in exports to $2.1 trillion in 2011.  This is better growth than the UK, Germany, France, and Japan, yet we continue to have 13 million people either unemployed or under-employed.   We are looking at an economy that is about to either topple into a double dip recession or begin to grow again.   The US economic juggernaut will hum again if, and this is a big if, we can get Europe to handle their debt crisis, and the US politicians to come clean, stimulate the economy during the next few years, tighten fiscal policy when the economy begins to grow, and cut back spending about $4 for every dollar in tax revenues raised.  We have a big job ahead of us!