Recession to recovery: State coffers half full or half empty?

Even in Elkhart County, where unemployment plagued a fifth of the working population and President Barack Obama showed up -- barely a month after taking office -- to offer assurances of recovery, there was always a spark of optimism.

Despite high unemployment, skyrocketing home foreclosure numbers and what looked like the death spiral of the recreational vehicle industry, some officials, like Elkhart Circuit Court Judge Terry Shewmaker, held out hope.

"At the start we had 19 percent unemployment," Shewmaker said recently. "But that means that 80 percent were still working."

With the recession now more than a year in the rearview mirror, that kind of optimism might seem natural.