Can you believe our highly educated and best paid economists out there? "The recession is ending" ("has ended" some say.) Good times are here again! Who believes that?

Does the fact that the recession has ended have anything to do with 10 percent unemployment nationally (are there good jobs available in Muskogee?), home foreclosures are at their very highest (the banks were given all that money to help out homeowners but they used it to recover their own profit margins!). People are not shopping, they don't have any money to buy anything, city governments that depend upon sales taxes to pay their city bills (police, highways, hospitals, medicare, etc.) are not getting the taxes necessary to pay their bills. The food kitchens are filled with lines of "white collar unemployed," churches are delivering food to people who have no money to buy food. Cars are being repossessed by banks because people can't make the payments. People are living in their cars/trucks. Young marrieds who can't make it are turning to drugs and alcohol to free them from their troubles and abandoning their children and families. Grandparents are increasingly raising their grandchildren. Seniors are losing the aid and protection they need to survive.

Things are not good. Good times are not, i repeat, not here again. I dislike the analysts who say the recession is over and times are better! Better for who? Do they live on another planet, or what?

Michael McIntyre

Fort Gibson