 The jobs market continues to improve: 216,000 jobs were added in March. Company profits are exceeding forecasts for about three out of four firms, and shares had their best first quarter in 12 years. Real consumer spending (adjusting for inflation) is up a bit, and researchers at State Street Global Markets report that their index of investor confidence is up, with investors in North america the cheeriest of all. Better still, there is talk in Washington that the politicians are now serious about agreeing to spending cuts for this fiscal year, and to a longer-term combination of plans to rein in deficit spending. That would help to halt the dollar's decline.  Unfortunately, this is only part of the picture. Home sales remain more than 9% below the level in 2010, even after a bit of improvement in February. Four million unsold homes overhang the market, and four out of every ten homes sold were put on the market by owners who could not pay the mortgage, or decided that the value of the home was so far below the mortgage that it paid to send the bank a jingle mail - an envelope containing the keys and a note, "It's all yours". No surprise that prices continue to drop.  all of this matters so much because the effect of these woes is not confined to the housing industry. Home values make up an important part of total personal assets, and a depressed housing market has a negative wealth effect, cuts into spending and has an outsized effect on consumers' outlook.  Similarly, petrol prices have an outsized effect on consumers' perceptions of the level of inflation. Petrol is a repetitive purchase; you watch the dials on the pump spin as you fill up; you see signs announcing rising prices as you drive to work or the shops; you conclude that your income will be squeezed.  and you are right. Inflation is rising faster than incomes, leaving consumers worse off. Bill Simon, chief executive of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, says inflation is "going to be serious": consumers will pay more for food, clothes and most other items. The effect of the flood of dollars being turned out by the Federal Reserve Board, and rising wages in China and other asian suppliers, is likely to hit consumers hard in coming months.  Developments beyond the control of american policymakers are adding to a growing sense of unease. Periodic oil price spikes seem to have been replaced by an oil price plateau. Even when Libyan production is restored, oil company executives and traders will remain fearful that supplies could be interrupted by rumblings and popular uprisings in oil-producing countries. Higher risk means demands for higher returns, which in turn means higher prices, especially since it now seems that Saudi arabia no longer has sufficient excess capacity to provide as robust a buffer against shortages as it once did.  add another factor to the oil-price equation: bribes. No, not the sort we usually think of when discussing who gets drilling rights, and where. These "bribes" are paid to the increasingly restive people who threaten the illiberal regimes that control the bulk of the Middle East's oil production. The Saudi rulers have decided that it is a good idea to share some more of the revenues from the kingdom's oil sales with the people whose money it really is, and have raised benefits of various sorts by about $130 billion. This means that for the Saudi budget to remain in balance, the oil price cannot go below about $85 a barrel now and $100 by 2015. If this turns out to be a new floor, the days of $50, $60 and $70 oil will become grist for the mills of economic historians and of no relevance to economic forecasters.  That would be less of a problem for the resilient, flexible american economy were it not for two policies of the Obama administration. The first is to inhibit the development of domestic oil production, a process that predated the offshore oil spill by "British Petroleum". The second is to make the shift to other fossil fuels more costly. The administration seems to believe that the wind blows and the sun shines all the time, and in places where consumers of electricity live, and so is placing its bets - well, taxpayers' be 