Good Economic News?

After several pessimistic posts on the economic prospects of the country, I would be remiss to not note the recent trend of better economic news: US consumer spending and income up slightly, inflation not increasing appreciably, durable goods and factory orders up. All this is nicely recapped in this post from Macroblog, along w/ links to some more pessimistic readings of the data, such as this from Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture. In a nutshell, the pessimistic view is that yes, the economy seems to be moving out of 'soft patch,' but the better monthly and quarterly numbers can't hide continuing huge structural problems that will ultimately have to be reckoned with. Still, at the macro level, the economy seems to be doing better lately.