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"Spending on equipment and software as a share of GDP is almost back to its pre-recession level." Is this supposed to be good? I think the objective should be to get investment back up at least to a level consistent with full employment, not a level consistent with a recession (when GDP is below "normal"). Maybe it should be higher than that level, since a higher-than-average GDP growth rate is needed to get back to the long-term trend. It would be more informative to show these things as a share of trend GDP or potential GDP (which is published by the Fed). It is certainly true that businesspeople are not investing enough to cause GDP to recover to trend level, and this is because of "uncertainty". But what they are uncertain about is whether demand will sustain expansion, not government deficits, taxes or regulation as Samuelson usually claims. - skeptonomist