The Way We Live Now: laying back, soaking in that recovered feeling. You feel it? Feels like a golden skeleton rubbing your nipples down with Ben-Gay. Like a flash crash and ice heist at the same time. But without upside.

We're so far behind on this god damn recovery, it's actually stressing us out, nipple tingles notwithstanding. They just announced the thing yesterday, and it was already 15 months old; now, a day after we heard about, they're already telling us that the recovery's slowing down, or even stalling. Can a motherfucker get a minute to enjoy this motherfucker?

Apparently not. In this recovery, we all have to sit around talking about how the recovery "feels," just like a twelve-step program, but here the only step is "Remain unemployed." Here's how it feels, probing probers: like some lowlifes just robbed you for a million bucks worth of jewels despite the fact that your husband is a respected hot dog executive who could crush them, if they were hot dogs. It feels like you can't even trust the Pope to launder money properly. It feels like you rushed out to get back into stocks when you heard the happy news, only to learn that the nonexistent recovery has already been fully priced into the market, leaving you with no alpha, bro.

No alpha indeed. We're only one Bernanke eyebrow twitch from the next Flash Crash. This recovery is a bird on a wire, and that wire is live, with electricity, shocking the bird's feet, and the bird is you.

[Pic via]