It's the stupid economists, smarty

Tie together our pieces on inflation, rising interest rates' negative impact on housing values (the Consumption is a function of wealth relationship), declining real median income, the prospect of declining business investment (driven by expected consumption) and you have the end of the economic expansion. Economists' (see Fortune magazine consensus) '06-'07 forecasts were too optimistic, i.e. economists surprised by 4/06 inflation rate, and are having second thoughts after we had the likely to be correct first thoughts. Evidence that economists are indulging in Bush buttering up comes from comments on the labor sector. Specifically, lame arguments emerged as rebuttals to the contention that mean wages of jobs created since 2000 had fallen significantly, going on to claim that job quality was not declining. To support this contention, they pointed to increasing number of attorneys positions. With high ($85-$100k) starting salaries, it could be argued this subset of the new jobs helped the arrest the decline in mean wages. But, when you consider new attorneys were a microscopic percentage of the new jobs, the argument seems specious at best.