If 2008 resembles any recent political year, it's 1992, when roughly the same number of Americans thought the country was headed in the wrong direction --mainly because of the economic recession that year.

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The point is that car companies have officially survived the 2008 recession and because of the recession they have morphed, become more interesting and disparate as they change direction to meet an evolving infrastructure.

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The President fully understands that this country is continuing to emerge from the Great Recession, that Americans continue to be concerned about the direction of the economy, the need to have the economy grow more, to have it create more jobs.

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However, given the utter trendlessness of the economy since emerging from the Great Recession, it is important to be alert to signs of a new direction especially when that new direction could have distinctly negative consequences.

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Firms are being squeezed, in one direction by the country's debilitating recession, and in the other by regulatory reforms that punish many of the old, wasteful ways.

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There are other ways of having a recession than a shrinking money supply (Bob Mugabe did pretty well in the other direction, causing one through hyperinflation).

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