Let's say the economy stays in the tank and the situation in Afghanistan is much worse. The unemploymen rate is still above 10 %.
Huckabee wins the GOP nomination. He has the support of the Tea Party movement and selects Mike Pence for VP. Michael Bloomberg runs as independent with Hagel as VP.
What will happen?
We are in an unstable situation -- either genuine growth or a sucker's rally. It's about an 80% chance of the former and about a 20% chance of the latter. In 2012 the unemployment rate will not be 10% -- it will either be much higher or decidedly lower.
Expectations are down from the Double-Zero decade in which plenty of easy money was to be made by the financial equivalent of shell games, and when it was easier to import than to manufacture. By 2012 our prosperity, if we have it, will depend upon people with brains doing real work and making things either for our own use or for export instead of depending upon financial legerdemain.
We are almost back to where we were, at least in securities prices, where we were in September 2008, when a more decline typical of an "ordinary" recession threatened to become a full-blown depression. But the recession began in 2007.
