There is propaganda, and there are facts. For anyone seeking just one concise, definitive and completely true (as in fact-, not hope- based) explanation of what has happened to the American economy in the past 2 years, we suggest this presentation by former OMB director David Stockman, whose 10 minute appearance on the CNBC's strategy session left the hosts with absolutely nothing to retort.
Among his observations: the government sector for the first time in history is shrinking: "the reason is that governments are broke... we are going to have to cut back government employment." And it gets scarier: "if you take core government plus the middle class economy (65 million jobs), that's the breadwinning economy, if we take some numbers - how many jobs in the "core economy" in November - zero; how many jobs since last December: net zero; how many jobs since the bottom of the recession in June 2009: still a million behind from when the recession ended."
As to whether the economy can grow without employment growth: "I can't imagine how it can because employment growth generates income growth which is the basis for spending and saving ultimately and we are not getting income growth out of the middle class." And the stunner: the job "growth" has come almost exclusively from the part-time economy (two-thirds). Why is this a major problem: "there is 35 million jobs in that sector, with an average wage of $20,000 a year: that is not a breadwinning job, you can't support a family on that, you can't save on that. Those jobs will not generate income that will become self-feeding into spending."
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/former-omb-director-debunks-economic-recovery-myth
EXCELLENT interview.. this guy doesn't have an exe to grind, just lays out the facts; video is worth watching (skip ahead 2 1/2 minutes for interview):
http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/1680963951/code/cnbcplayershare
In the video, the former OMB director walks you through some charts showing that basically the job losses have been coming from all the "good" middle class jobs. Jobs added ever since Bush were all low paying McJobs.
At the rate of this current "reovery," he estimates it will take FORTY-ONE YEARS for there to be a middle class jobs recovery -- that's best case, assuming no double dip between now and the MIDDLE OF THE CENTURY.
I remember reading a book by Stockman shortly after he left the Reagan administration. Sort of a tell all" it wasn't my fault" you see a lot of the time from newly unemployed insiders. His claim was that he was sent out to deliver the bad news about what it would take to decrease the size of government enough to pay for Reagan's tax cuts. In the end Reagan cut a deal with Tip O'Neil to get his military build up and they punted any real budget cuts down the road. Then Reagan got shot and from then on his presidency was mostly a coast to the finish at least as far as the economy was concerned. 
