1) According to the most recent figures on growth (0.6% 4th quarter GDP), we are not currently in a recession. We are certainly in a period of slow growth that may feel recessionary, and we may yet experience one in 2008, but can we please keep our terms straight? Stop the fear-mongering.

2) Anybody who takes out a mortgage at 2% and believes it won't reset higher is someone I'd like to speak to about my tropical beachfront property in Alaska. Unfortunately, there were lots of greedy and/or naive people who bought more house than they could afford in the past few years. Thus, it only stands to reason that many of them will ultimately lose it. I don't know why this is everyone else's problem. More than 99% of U.S. homes are not in foreclosure.

One fact that should be obvious - but is not plainly stated in this article - is that HRC's own husband was the president who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagal into law.

It's an indication of the cynicism of the Clinton campaign that she could even pretend to be for any current reform proposals when she was part of the administration that helped Republicans dismantle components of the New Deal financial regulatory system in the '90s. Perhaps this is the vaunted "experience" she's always laying claim to.

Glenn, can you (or any readers) comment on an editorial by Silvestre Reyes on the PAA that appeared today in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune?

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/16866491.html

He wrote this article in response to an idiotic rant by a local Republican Congresswoman about the House's "failure" to renew the PAA.

Here's what seems disturbing: Reyes, quoting the administration, states the government is now getting "full cooperation" from the telecoms and that the "authorities" of the PAA (I don't know what that means) remain "in full effect".

Is he simply referring to the provision (which he references later) that allows surveillance begun under the PAA to continue for a year? Since that reference comes in a succeeding paragraph, it's not entirely clear to me.

I found the piece as a whole to be somewhat mealy-mouthed and less than inspiring, as Reyes seems more concerned with how mean the Republicans are and trying to prove that "everyone is cooperating" than with ensuring the protection of Fourth Amendment guarantees.

By pandering to the worst instincts in the American character - the prurient and puritanical obsession with everything sexual - politicians are reaping what they've sown.

How many times have we had to listen to a politician give another droning speech about the importance of "values," or go on and on about their "faith"? How often has it been obvious that whatever "values" they're talking about merely represent a form of code-speak, meant to leave out whole classes of people and divide the electorate?

Most of the time, this type of political discourse comes at the expense of a discussion about things that politicians can actually do something about, like priorities for public spending, or environmental laws, or international relations.

In short, it's no politician's business what my "values" are. Maybe if they continue to get burned, they'll think twice before prosecuting people for victimless crimes, scapegoating sexual minorities, or any of the other despicable tactics they indulge in. Until then, we should enjoy the show.

Even those of us on the other side of the fence should mourn the demise of Ron Paul's candidacy. The fact that so few Republicans would actually vote for him just proves what liberals have thought all along: the current generation of Republicans are anything but conservative. They're proto-fascist, right-wing authoritarians. They don't believe in individual liberty (except for themselves, of course), and they're contemptuous of the rights of the people as expressed in the U.S. Constitution.

For that matter, I'm not terribly convinced that either Obama or Hillary believes in those ideals, as evidenced by their lukewarm opposition to warrantless wiretapping. I guess at this point in American politics, we have to choose between some rights or none at all.

The increase in bankruptcies and foreclosures, with concomitant decrease in demand for consumer goods like iPods, might suggest nothing more than that people were spending money they didn't have on things they couldn't afford.

This has been the way of the American economy for a long time now, but logic would dictate that it can't go on forever.

I chuckle at how many Americans will swallow anything if it's presented by someone who makes an effort at sounding credible and presents it in I-know-what's-good-for-you therapeutic tones. Case in point: Suze Orman. To be fair, most of her advice is standard boilerplate financial planning stuff that you can find anywhere - even in your Sunday paper - without buying her books.

However, I remember a real doozy she came out with a couple of years ago. On a PBS show, she actually told her audience not to buy bond mutual funds, but to do their own research and buy bonds individually!

I almost fell out of my chair at such a ludicrous proposition. Did she really just tell mom and pop to construct their own bond portfolios? She sure did.

I work in financial services, and I can tell you that this is a task that only a fixed-income analyst or portfolio manager with a significant amount of training (and aptitude) can perform with any degree of competence. Besides, most average people investing in a 401(k) wouldn't even have that option available to them. In other words, this was at best useless, and at worst just downright bad advice.

Don't believe everything you hear - even on PBS.