Is Obama a failure? Not by his lights. His goal was never to stimulate the economy. His goal was to expand government spending, and he used the recession as an excuse to do so. And, by this standard, he is a raging success. With the stimulus spending, the government proportion of gross domestic product will rise from about 35 percent to about 40 percent, and with health care "reform" it will go soaring into the mid-40s, bringing us to parity with Germany en route to France!

But the results are in: None of Obama's spending is doing anything to help the economy.

Of course, the process of household savings, designed to pay down debt, is very healthy.

Economists call it de-leveraging. By the start of the recession, the debt American households owe had risen from 70 percent of their annual income in 1995 to 140 percent (excluding mortgages). Now it's on its way back down again. And, eventually, that will lead to a real recovery -- if Obama doesn't wreck the currency and bring on mega-inflation before then (but he probably will).