Sensationalism? We haz it.

The US is not in a recession, the worst or otherwise. It's not January 20th yet. Then and only then will the Shrubbites admit economic disaster.

I need to correct Mr. Harrison.

Only then will the right point and scream at Obama & crew, saying how much they screwed up despite how much time he's had.

I have heard a number of folks complaining about how Obama "hasn't done anything yet". Even from folks who know he's not president until Jan 20 I've seen this, and they're not the overwhelming majority you'd hope for.

For anyone who worked in financial services in the early 1990's or in IT 2001-2005 we've seen it all before. Mostly it amounts to people being fired a few years before planned retirement. And then they discover that their next egg aka the house they thought they earned 11 billion percent ROI on isn't worth that much. So they keep working a few extra years and cut back their plans. Kids go to public university vs that BA in Italian Art History from UV Bennington. You stop buying new SUV's every other year.

If you have 3/4ths of a brain and the willingness to do what it takes, there's generally a job out there for you. Not the perfect job or even a good job. But a job. Then when you get that job you can write a complaint to Cary Tennis about how much it sucks that you can't go flower picking in Thailand for 8 months this year.

Let it get worse and worse in the waning days of the Bush Administration. Don't shut the coop until ALL the chickens have come home to roost.

Even today, we hear people talk about how the Great Depression was drawn out longer than it otherwise would have been, because of the New Deal. (This, invariably from people who are trying to dismantle the last few bits of the social safety net.) After all, if the Great Depression was partly FDR's fault, then it can't have been all Hoover's fault. And if it wasn't all Hoover's fault, then Hoover wasn't so bad, and so we should take a few pages out of poor, unjustly maligned Herbert Hoover.

If the US economy is anything but dead by January 20th, the right-wing ideologues will be back in ten years instead of fifty, rewriting history, talking about how George Bush wasn't so bad, how those no-good liberals have been trying to tarnish his good name, how he is the most underrated president in history. And, of course, how we should bring back some of those good ol' George Dubya Bush economic policies.

The only difference is that the government went ahead and passed the big bailout. We are still seeing prices on all kinds of inflated investments coming down to earth, and very fast at that. Maybe we should look into making things that we can hold in our hands rather than making up "products" whose value we can inflate at will because they aren't real. I've never been much of a patriot on this issue, but I must implore the readers here, BUY AMERICAN THIS HOLIDAY SEASON!

Actually, we dropped dead a year ago. We just found out about it today.

U.S. Entered a Recession A Year Ago, NBER Says

The U.S. economy has been in recession for about a year, according to the research organization that tracks economic cycles.

In a statement, the National Bureau of Economic Research said its Business Cycle Dating Committee determined that the U.S. entered recession in December 2007, marking the end of the economic expansion that began in November 2001. That month marked the end of the last recession for the U.S. economy.

http://tinyurl.com/55ezsy

P.S.

Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion

Analysts warn that the nation's next financial crisis could come from the staggering cost of battling the current one.

http://tinyurl.com/6f2gn9

The goundwork is being laid by none other than guys like Grover Norquist:

Well, the economy’s in the present state because when the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006, you knew that those tax increases were going to come in 2010. The stock market began to collapse as soon as you recognized that those old tax rates were coming back. So, we’re in the middle of responding to those tax increases.

http://tinyurl.com/6qcv3d

Brilliant! Get this man a job at the Fed!

"rational inuberance"?

... ACORN and a group called the Economic Crisis Action Group are going to picket US Bank and Wells Fargo. The former bank got $6Bn, and the latter bank $25Bn, and they are not even distressed banks! More than the government refuses to give a useful entity like GM with the same 'no strings attached' approach.

We will picket them to demand they use this money to re-arrange mortgage financing, to keep people in their houses here in the state. Part of the platform is "Stop the Foreclosures!" We may also picket the sheriff's sale at Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located - the County should declare a moritorium on forclosures.

Good idea. I'm going to go get inuberated.

The Japanese told us that a decade ago, and they were right. We denied it and mocked them for the statement in one of the non-products we make (the awful sequel movie Robocop III) but they nailed our pathetic national character. Of course, they weren't immune; they don't have the land for factories to make anything, and have to buy their junk from China like we do.

Nevertheless, the combination of evangelical Christian hatred of science, logic and public schools, and the belief that Jesus will take care of anyone who blows up abortion clinics and drags gays to death behind their pickup trucks, has assured America's collapse. Because our stupidity is not simply lack of knowledge.

Our stupidity is our inability to understand that we are all in the same boat, and we must mutually support each other. That means billion-dollar auto exeutives and the lowly workers on the assembly line (the few we have left). That means New York intellectuals who never washed out a handkerchief on their own, and the little ladies in Newark, Ohio who spend all day in the coin laundromat. We can't recognize that we are all Americans and need every member of our tribe.

We can't buy American. There is nothing American any more. And unless President Obama gets going on civic work projects and makes Americans learn physical skills again, there never will be anything American ever again.