Lucid Links (031209, Morning)
Noteworthy Net-Worthies:
Best description of the Troubled Assets Relief Program yet — “an unaccountable secretive national hedge fund which buys lousy assets at inflated prices from banks mismanaged for personal profit by multi-millionaires, and makes non-consensual capital calls on uninformed, captive, financially unsophisticated families.” — i.e., taxpayers. I suppose rank and file taxpayers are seen by the elitists as “unsophisticated,” but at least most taxpayers know that income is supposed to be greater than or equal to outgo.
An anonymous columnist at Pajamas Media writes — “Get Ready for Obama’s Department of ‘Extreme’ Justice.” Money sentence: “Indeed, virtually every nominee to date is far to the left of the legal mainstream.” Also: “President Obama has nominated individuals who are extremists on issues such as abortion, pornography, and euthanasia.”
From House Republican Leader John Boehner — “President’s Embryonic Stem Cell Decision Runs Counter to His Promise to ‘Be a President for All Americans.’”
Michelle Malkin — “Tax-subsidized ACORN mob teams up with L.A. teachers.” As I noted in a post yesterday, only the news outlet that Michelle referred to mentioned ACORN’s presence.
James Morrow (HT Instapundit) — “The Calgon President.”
This small collection of posts about a legal billing matter is in reality an indicator that something is rotten in Michigan’s legal community. There is cause for believing that the extended family of Mitt Romney is intertwined with it.
Heh: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — “The Dodd Couple.”
From the Wall Street Journal — “Obama, Geithner Get Low Grades From Economists.” Money passage: “On average, they gave the president a grade of 59 out of 100. …. (Tim) Geithner received an average grade of 51. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke scored better, with an average 71.” But “In December, before Mr. Obama took office, three-quarters of respondents said the incoming administration’s economic team was better than the departing Bush team.” Reality bites.
Hope for earth, from Gallup — “Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.”
Mark Tapscott nails the Team Obama mindset — “policy-making by perpetual crisis.”
Here’s a question for you, when does over 12 million people out of work really mean 5.3 million? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090312/ap_on_bi_ge/economy
The number of people receiving benefits for more than a week increased by 193,000 to 5.3 million, the most on records dating back to 1967.
Tom, your favorite journalist AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report. /sarcasm/
This isn’t the first time I have seen this kind of low balling of the unemployment figures using the same methodology. How are they making this claim and isn’t it deceptive to the public if they aren’t explaining why their figure and the stated BLS figure is off by so much? http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Comment by dscott — March 12, 2009 @ 9:55 am
dscott, all the people who are in between jobs and don’t file for unemployment, plus all those who don’t file out of pride, plus all those whose benefits have run out and are still looking, plus all out of high school or college looking for their first jobs, explain most of the difference. Also (this is a bad thing), illegals who tell BLS they are unemployed for the unemployment rate are also part of the differece.
Comment by TBlumer — March 12, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
“lousy assets at inflated prices from banks mismanaged for personal profit by multi-millionaires.”
No, more like mismanaged at the expense of personal profit and the banks health by bequest of a politically correct, stubborn and forceful government entitity.
Comment by z — March 12, 2009 @ 4:47 pm