Leftward liberals and rightward conservatives are both missing the mark when it comes to how they're framing economic issues. While some partisans of any stripe may have a roughly correct conclusion here and there, the reasoning involved is rarely enlightening for "pocket-book centrists" - a term for the majority of Americans simply concerned with living a comfortable and fair American dream. This morning, the much vaunted cultural critic Frank Rich writes in The Times that:

No less unsettling is the first-anniversary snapshot of 9/15: a rebound for Wall Street but not for the 26-million-plus Americans who are unemployed, no longer looking for jobs, or forced to settle for part-time work. Some 40 million Americans are living in poverty. While these economic body counts keep rising, tough regulatory reform for reckless financial institutions, too-big-to-fail and otherwise, seems more remote by the day.

The current economic picture for any developed nation including The United States will continue to be easily maligned for many more months.  If you swim to the bottom of a lake, you're still under water while you swim back to the top.

Two things:

1. "Rebound for Wall Street" - While headline numbers like DOW and S&P are a helpful indicator for future economic prospects, there is also a wealth of data within the complex array of trades going on anywhere in the markets. Investors making those trades care about one thing: making money. So there is some valuable "reverse engineering" to be done with the trading data. Bottom line: a rebound in the economy will always be presaged by a rebound in the stock markets, because investors are forward-looking.

2. "Tough Regulatory Reform" In Recession - During any tough recession, one of the most pernicious aspects is the degree of uncertainty a recession brings with it. Regulatory reform in any context also brings uncertainty. By 2008 as the American economy began to unravel wholly as a result of horrendously failed regulation over 20 years or so, (see "Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000" which created the Credit Default Swap gremlins), new reforms were never needed more in any market in history. However the economic destabilization caused by the Wall Street collapse was destabilizing enough, to say the least. The resulting "consumer protection" portions of the rushed but sensible new regulations have, for example, introduced much more complexity in the real estate lending industry which is causing real estate transactions (which we desperately need for recovery) to become more challenging and time consuming. It is not a crisis though.

Bottom line is this: as I often say, there are no magic ponies. When you're swimming to the bottom of a lake, it's a tremendous feeling to touch bottom, but it's foolish then to start complaining that you're not already back in the boat. Likewise with regulations - reform is always uncertain and imperfect but not unneeded. Like any major endeavor that has any chance for long-lasting, positive, and stable results, we have to balance in our minds the competing goals of stability and progress.

If we don't make space in our minds to hold competing dynamics - a central pillar of stable engineering after all - then our economic outlook as pocket-book centrists will get skewed, which could undermine our own personal economic interests. Just remember that no partisan holds a monopoly on truth, and no partisan is putting their personal money where there mouths are. I wish they would, because then it would be easy to judge them - like any fund manager - by their actions and results instead of just their words and promises.

Just be careful out there.