On Tuesday, August 11, 2009, President Obama hosted a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on health insurance reform, telling the crowd, "I don't think government bureaucrats should be meddling, but I also don't think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling.  That's the health care system I believe in."

The Wall Street Journal's latest monthly survey of US economists shows that a majority believe that the recession that began in December 2007 is now over. The economists also say Fed chairman Ben Bernanke should be reappointed when his four-year term expires next January.

"He deserves a lot of credit for stabilizing the financial markets," said Joseph Carson of AllianceBernstein. "Confidence in recovery would be damaged if he was not reappointed."

The Journal surveyed 52 economists; 47 responded.

Bernanke does deserve credit for his aggressive measures once the housing sector crashed but like his predecessor Alan Greenspan, he was downplaying the impact of the sub-prime crisis, well into 2007. As for President Obama risking damaging the economy if Bernanke is not reappointed, this is a common soundbite on these occasions, which should be taken with a pinch of salt!

In the survey, 27 economists said the recession had ended and 11 seeing a trough this month or next. Gross domestic product in the third quarter is now expected to show 2.4% growth at a seasonally adjusted annual rate amid signs of life in the manufacturing sector, partly spurred by inventory adjustments and strong demand for the "cash for clunkers" car-rebate program.

Just eight of 51 economists said more stimulus is necessary, suggesting an average of about $600 billion in additional spending. On average, the economists forecast an unemployment rate of at least 10% through next June, with a decline to 9.5% by December 2010.

“Trillions more in Washington spending will not end a recession, it only puts future generations under a mountain of unsustainable debt,”House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said last week. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the stimulus has pumped $125 billion into the economy so far.

On the day President Bush took office, the US national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. In Sept 2008, before big add-ons for bailouts, the Treasury Department said that the national debt stood at more than $9.849 trillion. That’s a 71.9% increase on Bush’s watch.

Bloomberg News says today that the economy will expand 2% or more in four straight quarters through June, the first such streak in more than four years, according to the median of 53 forecasts in the monthly Bloomberg News survey. Analysts lifted their estimate for the third quarter by 1.2% compared with July, the biggest such boost in surveys dating from May 2003.

“What’s happening now is a leveling off, not a strong increase in growth, and that owes a little to the stimulus package,” said Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Seeing the rest of it filter through to the economy in the second half of the year will be extremely helpful.”