ESCALATING ECONOMIC WORRIES – AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  I've noticed, in the last few weeks, an escalation in the worry level of economic observers.  Things aren't going well.  More important, the projections are anything but optimistic.  The so-called recovery is failing.

Of course, don't tell that to the "journalists" still fronting for Obama.  By the time election day rolls around, they'll tell us we're in boom times.  Why, there'll be tofu in every pot and two Chevy Volts in every garage.  But the realities are different.  From CNBC: 

While this quarter's earnings reports have crossed a substantially lowered profit bar, future expectations through the year indicate a recession could be on the way.

Estimates for the third and fourth quarters have been dropped to levels not seen since the days of the 2008 financial crisis, below even the muted 2 percent expected level of inflation.

That's an ominous recession sign for an economy that has barely managed to attain positive growth this year even with the strong level of earnings beats, according to an analysis by Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx in New York.

"Revenue estimates for the back half of 2012 have been slowly working their way lower this year," Colas said. "This trend, however, has accelerated to the downside over the past 30 days and we are fast approaching levels where these estimates are unambiguously pointing to the risk of a U.S./global recession later into 2012 and 2013."

For the current quarter, about 69 percent of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 [.SPX Loading... () ] have beaten analyst profit estimates. Only 42 percent, though, have beaten on top-line revenue estimates, indicating that growth is weakening.

That's evidenced by a rash of downward forward revisions from analysts.

In the broader S&P 1500, analysts have cut outlooks for 792 companies and raised for just 323, with the decreases especially prevalent in technology, which saw half its components down, the highest level since February 2009, according to Bespoke Investment Group.

COMMENT:  If Romney is elected, he might not be able to stop the downward slide for a while, but he will take the appropriate action to begin a long-term, market-based recovery.  If Obama is elected, he will blame Bush, and even his defeated opponent.

We must ask the painful question:  Do some on the left, including possibly the president himself, actually see some good in the current economic pain?  I think they do.  They know that hard times bring increased government intervention in the economy.  They know that hard times make more people dependent on the government, which means more votes for the people writing the checks.  They know that hard times make some people question the very premise of the United States, which the left has always questioned.  And they know that hard times forces Americans to avert their eyes from foreign threats, weakening American power all over the globe, a dream of the left.

Bad news for most of us may be good news for certain ideological groups.  When those groups are near, or at, the center of power, we have need to worry, and to make changes on election day.

July 23, 2012