This placard in the window of the Manhattan Café announced the Café’s employment opportunities.  Located near the intersection of Hanley and Wydown this restaurant’s sign immediately caught my notice.  I had just stepped out of Starbucks, latté in hand, when I spied this sign.  I iPhone-o-graphed the announcement and emailed it to the Perma-Bear, just to tweak him.  Call me bad, call me vindictive, but please don’t call me wrong.

Way back in 2008, only two years ago, George Bush was still president and Barack Obama was only the President elect.  Bush was pushing passage of the TARP, Obama concurred and congress went along too.  The banking system was saved, but unfortunately, so were the bankers.

If Obama had acted with Bush as FDR had acted with Hoover then he would have acted to scuttle TARP.  The banking system would have collapsed and we would all be speaking of the two Great Depressions, the last one and this one.  President elect FDR rebuffed Hoover’s entreaties.  This allowed the depression to worsen and once elected FDR profited from his increased political capital and was able to enact the New Deal.  FDR went on to four terms, but the economy was not fixed until the advent of World War II.

FDR made the politically correct decision, Obama made the correct decision.  Obama and the Democrats took it on the chin this month, in part because their economic remedies had not yet borne fruit.  If those remedies had shown more success before this month’s elections then the Democrat’s political outcome might have been different, because as we all know, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

However hopeful is the wording of this small business’ placard it in no way can represent a turning of the economic tide.  The Perma-Bear was right in pointing out to me that these café job opportunities wouldn’t benefit me in the least, if I ever happened to lose my position. It is barely even a ripple in the tide, but it is not the only ripple in our economy’s turbulent sea.

This week’s jobs report was unexpectedly positive, so was last month’s too.  Imperceptibly at first, but with gathering gusto employment is beginning to improve.  Since January the private sector has added 1.1 million jobs.  This is only a dent in the 11 million jobs that have been lost, but it is still a dent.

Manhattan Café’s placard has no effect on my employment opportunities and neither does Google’s announcement of an across the board 10% raise to all of their employees.  Google gave this raise to help prevent competitors from raiding their employees.  Both employers, Google and Manhattan Café, are outside of my employment bandwidth on the spectrum of job opportunities.  It is comforting though to see after so many years of job erosion, the first few layers of job accretion being settled.  Now, how’s that for mixed metaphors?  😉

My point is, is that the economy is starting to recover.  The twin threats of a double-dip recession and even worse, stagflation, seem to be receding.  Recognizing and even better publicizing continued economic improvement will begin to create a snowball effect.  The daily drumbeat of negative news can be counteracted through citizen news.  Worry, but if you see happy, share.