Unemployment is unacceptably high, but voters grasp that the U.S. is not recovering from a normal recession, but from the worst crisis since the Depression
Everything's relative, and at 2.5 percent growth, the U.S. remains the fastest-growing rich economy, and is regaining some of the recent ground lost to newcomers like China
Investors have gone insane for commodities, pouring money into everything from oil to copper. Just like the world's mania for tech stocks in the 1990s, this boom is headed for a bust.