Really? According to some economists it is and the Drive-Bys are spinning the news faster and more furiously than a jet engine turbine:

The Great Recession, which rolled over our financial lives like one of P.J. Keating’s giant pavers, is most likely over. Home sales, while still far below the levels of a year ago, have risen for three straight months—a first since 2004. The stock market has rallied 44 percent since March, thanks to renewed optimism and improving earnings from big companies like Goldman Sachs and Apple. In June, seven of the 10 indicators in the Conference Board Leading Economic Index pointed upward, including manufacturing hours worked and unemployment claims. Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louis–based consulting firm, says the economy is expanding at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the current quarter. Economic activity “will increase slightly over the remainder of 2009,” Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress.

I see. Home sales - spurred by low interest rates and an $8,000 tax gift from Uncle Sam have ticked up ever so slightly after plummeting for the past two years. Suddenly an upward swing in the stock market - which dropped value like a bag of rocks after Obama was elected - is seen by the Drive-Bys as a bonum in se when, during the Bush years, it was sneered at as a malum in se that only portended more profits for the Wall Street fat cats.

Times sure have changed, haven’t they? According to the Drive-By zeitgeist what’s good for the stock market is good for America - at least until a Republican gets elected President in 2012, at which time they will revert to the Bush template (assuming most of them haven’t perished at the hands of patriotic lynch mobs by then).

Meanwhile, Verizon announced today that it will laying off 8,000 employees. Mortgage foreclosures continue to rise as more people lose their jobs and those who are out of work discover they can are unable to find work. In the midst of all this House of Representatives passed a bill that, if it becomes law, will wreck this economy and the Obama Administration is threatening to inflict socialized medicine on the nation and, in the process, wreck the greatest healthcare system in the world.

And I still haven’t found a job yet. Yup…the recession is over, all right…it’s becoming a Depression - in more ways than one.