there are many reasons the 'economy' won't return to what it was for some time, if ever, and you can discover some of those reasons in this article;

There are two structural reasons why consumer spending will not rebound, no matter how “open” the economy may be. Virtually everyone who glances at headlines knows the global economy is lurching into either a deep recession or a full-blown depression, depending on the definitions one is using. Everyone also knows the stock market has roared back as if nothing has happened.

While most financial pundits have accepted that a V-shaped recovery is not possible, few (if any) observers have discussed two factors that will cause consumer spending to crash harder than generally expected:

1. The top 10% of households account for about half of all consumer spending, and these are the households that will be most affected by the sharp drop in assets, small business income and the shrinking of heretofore “safe” white-collar jobs in higher education, healthcare, finance, etc.

In other words, since the top 10% own roughly 85% of all non-family-home assets (i.e. stocks, bonds, business equity, rental real estate), the decline in the value of these assets and the decline in the income generated by these assets will hit the top 10%, not the bottom 90% who own a tiny sliver of these assets. (see charts below).........read more..........