Why has this economic recovery been so sluggish? In a normal recovery, job growth would be accelerating at this point, rather than dragging along at the same modest level month after month.

One culprit, off course, is the housing boom that left many homeowners with more debt than their home is worth. Another is the federal government that bailed out the big banks feeding the boom and had no money left to encourage job creation. And a third culprit is local governments that added a million jobs during the property-tax boom rather than banking the money and have now had to shed 500,000 of them.

In short, its the boom, stupid!

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The Wall Street Journal this week said, Grim Job Report Sinks Markets. The bold headline suggests an economy in retreat. After all, it's an election year. But the May job numbers look like more of the same moderate growth we've been getting in recent months.

Overall, jobs were up 1.4 percent in the past year, right in line with the growth rates of previous months. Manufacturing jobs were up 2 percent, including an 8 percent increase in cars. Retail jobs were up just 1 percent but, significantly, jobs at furniture stores were up 2.4 percent. Jobs at restaurants and bars were up 3 percent. Conclusion: consumers are buying big-ticket items and are treating themselves to small luxuries, important signs of optimism.

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Although the overall health of the economy is of interest to everyone, if you're a banker you particularly want to know when people will start borrowing money again.

Very roughly speaking, banks typically hold equal amounts of commercial loans, commercial real estate loans, home mortgages, consumer loans, government securities, and cash. With commercial, mortgage, and consumer lending sharply lower in the last few years, banks now hold more government securities and a lot more cash, both of which don't produce much income.

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Read the newspapers and we're at the brink: Global Gloom, Deepening Pessimism, Markets Drop Sharply. Is another Great Depression just around the corner? Is the US slumping to a decade of stagnation a la Japan? Is China now eating the lunch we thought we had bought cheap? Is our financial system just a Vegas vacation, making the house rich but producing no growth?

The answer is no, even though China is nibbling at that burrito and bankers are at the slots. The hero coming to the rescue of the US economy is that trusty favorite, the US Consumer. It's a Consumer with flaws, like any modern hero, with a tendency to binge, and again wielding the weapon that often leads to trouble: the Credit Card.

After 28 straight months of pulling back on the reins, consumers have finally found a level of debt that feels good enough to allow more spending to flow. During those 28 months, the level of consumer debt per person [let's leave mortgages out of this] fell 13 percent, from $8,600 to $7,500. During the last recession with a real estate crash, 20 years ago, consumer debt dropped 14 percent. Sure, many things are different now, but some things aren't.

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