When you increase demand for something, its price should go up.

In the case of bonds, if the demand for them increases, their price should go up, and their effective interest-rate yield should go down.

That didn’t happen on Friday when the Federal Reserve began executing its second round of “money from nothing” quantitative easing. Even though the Fed increased demand, bond prices went down and yields went up.

Why? If you read a late Friday afternoon report by the Associated Press’s Matthew Craft you essentially get a bunch of blubbering “I don’t know” statements (bolds after headline are mine):

Treasury prices take a dive; Interest rates jump

The Federal Reserve put its latest stimulus plan into action on Friday, buying government bonds in the hope of lowering long-term interest rates. But instead of sinking, interest rates jumped.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury hit 2.78 percent, the highest level since Sept. 10. The two-year yield, which had hovered around 0.40 percent for months, rose to 0.51 percent, a large move for that security.

The Fed bought its first batch of Treasurys since announcing its $600 billion plan to boost the economy last week. The central bank picked up $7.23 billion in Treasurys coming due between 2014 and 2016.

Buying bonds on a large scale should drive down long-term interest rates. Pushing bond prices up knocks yields down, and Treasury yields act as benchmarks for other lending rates. But Treasury prices dropped after the Fed bought its bonds, sending their yields sharply higher.

What happened? “It’s complicated today,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Capital Markets. “There’s just a lot going on.”

A collection of trends and events arrayed against Treasurys. Worries Ireland would default on its debt eased on Friday. LeBas said that gave European government bonds a lift while diminishing Treasurys’ appeal. As Treasury yields were climbing, Ireland’s 10-year bond yield dropped from 8.89 percent to 8.13 percent.

Foreign central banks, reliable Treasury buyers, weren’t around to help, said Tom Tucci, head of Treasury trading at RBC Capital Markets.

… Some banks decided it was time to sell. Tucci said central banks were dropping five-year Treasurys this week, a rare sight. “That’s the first time I’ve seen central bank sellers in I don’t know how long,” he said.

Geez, an eight year-old kid can come up with more creative excuses than the ones LeBas and Tucci offered. An eight year-old can also probably come up with better excuses as to why his or her former friends don’t seem to want to play games together any more.

I would also hope (probably in vain) that the AP can come up with a better term that “stimulus” to describe what Bernanke is doing. How about “electronically creating money”?

Let’s buy Craft, LeBas, and Tucci a couple of clues:

• One item that can heavily weigh down bond prices is inflation expectations. The beginning of Big Ben’s binge constituted final confirmation that the Fed is willing to risk inflation by creating hundreds of billions of dollars out of nothing. The size of the first day buy, if kept up on each business day — or even every other business day — will use up the $600 billion planned amount much faster than the announced eight months (600 divided by 7.23 is about 83 days). When future inflation expectations go up, bond prices go down, and bond yields go up.
• Another factor is default risk. Bond investors need to be confident that they will get their principal back at maturity. The fact is that Big Ben’s binge has been pressed into service because the administration and the current Congress have refused to do anything to get fiscal policy in order, running up the national debt by over $3 trillion since Barack Obama took office. Perhaps bond investors are losing confidence that this country will ever get its fiscal house in order. If we don’t, there is a high likelihood that we will see the Mother of All Defaults occur. When perceived default risk increases, bond prices go down, and bond yields go up. Greece is paying effective double-digit rates on its government debt for a reason.

C’mon, guys — especially the AP’s Craft. One or both of the aforementioned elephants is more than likely already in the room; if not, they’re knocking very loudly at the door. Why not say so? It beats the heck out of insults to our intelligence like “it’s complicated,” and “there’s a lot going on.” Zheesh.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Don’t go overboard with it, but have some pity on Sewell Chan at the New York Times.

On Thursday evening online and in Friday’s print edition, Chan was among three Times reporters who composed a report ripping President Obama’s lack of results at the G-20 summit. The piece’s original title — “Obama’s Economic View is Rejected on World Stage” — originally appeared online and actually made its way into the print edition. The headline apparently didn’t sit well with someone at the Times. As I noted in a previous post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), it was changed to “Obama Trade Strategy Runs Into Stiff Resistance” sometime on Friday.

That was apparently not enough to satisfy whoever is charge of politically correct revisionism at the Times. Chan seems to have been assigned the thankless task of composing not one, but two, kiss-and-make-up pieces to smooth things over.

Here are a few paragraphs from the first related item, complete with a laughably absurd headline and obvious internal contradictions:

Summit Shows U.S. Can Still Set Agenda, if Not Get Action

It could have been far worse.

That was the consensus among the leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers as they dispersed Friday, following a two-day summit meeting dominated by anxieties over currency and trade frictions. In their fifth meeting since the 2008 financial crisis, the leaders agreed in essence to a year-long cooling-off period during which they will slowly tackle persistent economic imbalances.

“In Seoul, there was too much jostling over currencies, deficits and exports for the G-20 leaders to make any significant breakthroughs,” said David Shorr, who studies economic diplomacy for the Stanley Foundation, an organization in Muscatine, Iowa, that advocates international cooperation. “But there was also enough concern to avert a disastrous breakdown.”

The meeting still showed the power of the United States to set the agenda for international discussion, even if the result — charging the International Monetary Fund with analyzing the sources and consequences of the imbalances — was far less robust than American officials had hoped for.

… in interviews here, officials from Europe and the United States said that weakening, specifically the decision by the Federal Reserve to inject $600 billion into the economy, was not a major topic of discussion in the leaders’ private meetings.

… Mr. Obama found himself defending the Fed’s decision buy government bonds to lower long-term interest rates, even though he has tried to avoid commenting on the central bank, an independent entity.

At the leaders’ dinner on Thursday, Mr. Obama acknowledged that the Fed’s monetary policy offered the most promising course of speeding the American recovery, given the political impediments to any additional fiscal stimulus measures, according to Mr. Barroso.

So let’s see:

• Our country’s ability to prepare a to-be-discussed list is really, really crucial, even if the list isn’t followed and tangible results aren’t achieved.
• “It could have been worse,” even though whatever Obama thought was important was put off for a whole year, which in diplomat-speak usually means “We’re putting those items way out there into the future, in the hope that conditions change enough in the meantime that we never have to really discuss them.”
• Ben Bernanke’s QE2 wasn’t a major topic — so not-major that Obama “found himself defending” it.

All of this makes perfect non-sense to me.

Chen’s second penance, which was posted online on Friday and appeared in Saturday’s print edition, was to make it appear as if Obama’s tempter tantrum over China’s lack of cooperation was really an example of being tough:

Obama Ends G-20 Summit With Criticism of China

The Group of 20 major economies took initial steps to address imbalances in the global economy on Friday. But they did not act as assertively as President Obama had hoped, and he left little doubt that he considered one country, China, the primary source of the problem.

Scrapping a longtime practice of speaking with diplomatic caution about China’s currency policy, Mr. Obama accused Beijing of intervening aggressively to keep its currency, the renminbi, below its market value to promote exports. He said it was a mistake for nations to think that “their path to prosperity is paved simply with exports to the United States.”

“Precisely because of China’s success, it’s very important that it act in a responsible fashion internationally,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference at the conclusion of the economic summit meeting here. “And the issue of the renminbi is one that is an irritant not just to the United States, but is an irritant to a lot of China’s trading partners and those who are competing with China to sell goods around the world.”

Though his own Treasury Department, like those of prior administrations, has certified that China is not a “currency manipulator,” a designation that can prompt Congressional trade action, Mr. Obama appeared to remove the remaining wiggle room he had on the subject of the renminbi, declaring: “It is undervalued. And China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.”

The tougher language seems likely to add tension with China, which has already sharply criticized the Obama administration’s decision to try to mediate territorial disputes involving China and its East and Southeast Asian neighbors.

But Mr. Obama’s efforts to persuade China to act on its own, or as part of a collective commitment by big economies to address trade imbalances, have yielded only incremental steps, raising the possibility of a contentious and awkward prelude to a state visit to Washington by President Hu Jintao of China scheduled for January.

Well, if China is manipulating its currency, haven’t we lost the so-called ‘high ground” in the discussion with Ben Bernanke’s second round of “money from nothing” quantitative easing?

Let’s hope this puts Sewell Chan back in good graces with the higher-ups at the Times. After all, the chances that Chan will break down somewhere down the road and tell the whole truth in another report are much higher than, say, David Leonhardt’s.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From an American Spectator column by G. Tracy Meehan III:

11.11.10 @ 6:07AM

The noise of the electoral season is no excuse for failing to remark on the passing of a great woman and, more importantly, celebrate her life. Let me make amends.

As reported by Dennis Hevesi in the New York Times’ Obituaries for October 19, “Dr. Mildred Jefferson, a prominent, outspoken opponent of abortion and the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School died Friday in Cambridge, Mass. She was 84.”

Dr. Jefferson, a surgeon, was appalled by the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy, up to the moment of birth. This decision, along with its evil twin, Doe v. Bolton, struck down all state restrictions on the practice, effectively allowing abortions in almost any circumstances including mere convenience.

Jefferson testified before Congress that these decisions “gave my profession almost unlimited license to kill.”

“With the obstetrician and mother becoming the worst enemy of the child and the pediatrician becoming the assassin for the family, the state must be enabled to protect the life of the child, born and unborn,” said the good doctor.

Dr. Jefferson, a native of Texas, was a founder and president (for several terms) of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), a federation of 50 state organizations and more than 3,000 chapters. She also served as director of Massachusetts Citizens for Life [] and was active in Black Americans for Life.

She also found time to practice surgery at Boston University Medical Center and serve as a professor of surgery at the university’s medical school.

By all accounts, including this writer’s own observation, Dr. Jefferson was a charismatic leader. “She was probably the greatest orator of our movement,” asserts Darla St. Martin, co-executive director of the NRLC. “In fact, take away the probably.”

“I am at once a physician, a citizen and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human life to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have the right to live,” said Dr. Jefferson in a 2003 profile in the American Feminist.

Reading Dr. Jefferson’s obituary caused me to recall the many great women I had the privilege of working with in my early days, right out of law school, as the right-to-life movement emerged in my hometown of St. Louis. My wife, mother and aunts were among them. I had the same experience years later in Michigan.

Go here for the rest of Meehan’s column.

Why a groundbreaking initiative debuting today is so important.

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Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Wednesday.

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First, the good news: The Congressional midterms, gubernatorial races, and various state and local electoral contests resulted in the large-scale, unmistakable repudiation of the political tax-and-spend culture that so many of us were hoping for.

Now for the bad news: The distance between where we are and a genuine long-term national fiscal and economic recovery is daunting. This is no time for disengagement.

Many American have begun to recognize just how deep the short-term and long-term financial holes we face really are. Others, sadly including many politicians who won key races last week and their party overlords, still don’t seem to get it.

The near-term situation is scary enough, and needs to be stabilized soon, or, as I said a month ago, there won’t be a long-term. But even if we satisfactorily resolve the short-term, the long-term problems we face are intimidating at levels most people have only begun to absorb.

Focusing on the short-term for a bit: Fiscal 2010, which ended on September 30, was the second time the U.S. government ran an annual deficit of well over $1 trillion. Fiscal 2009 was the first. As I noted two weeks ago, this year’s real spending deficit was worse than the first. Some departments went hog-wild. Spending at the Department of Education was up 30%. Spending increases at the Energy Department and the EPA (36%) were ridiculous. I could go on and on.

Federal collections on the whole came in barely higher than a year earlier, and were still about 20% lower than fiscal 2008 before subtracting IRS stimulus payments. Tax collections in most categories were down. The only reason receipts increased was that collections from the Federal Reserve increased by $42 billion.

Federal Reserve collections … What’s that all about? It’s about Ben Bernanke performing the 21st century’s equivalent of printing money. The Fed calls it “Quantitative Easing” (QE).

Properly employed, QE can be a stabilizing mechanism to keep an economy from nose-diving and assist it as it recovers. The Fed creates money out of nothing and invests it in government bonds, mortgage-backed securities and corporate bonds for a while. It is supposed to wind down those investments when condition warrant.

The trouble is that conditions don’t warrant pulling back, because a) there hasn’t been a meaningful recovery, and b) fiscal policy is a scandalous mess. What little economic improvement has occurred has not been enough to put people back to work. Unemployment has been stuck at over 9% for the longest period since the Great Depression.

Because of the deficits created by fiscal policy and the weak recovery that has accompanied it, the Fed can’t pull back on QE without significantly disrupting the economy. We can argue all day and night about whether the pullback should happen, but the fact is that at least for now Bernanke & Co. are determined not to let it happen, even as the administration continues to push for more historically ineffective stimulus and continued trillion-dollar deficits. The fed has embarked on “QE2,” a second round of quantitative easing that will increase the Fed’s investment portfolio by another $600 billion.

The deeper the QE hole, the harder it will be to dig out, and the worse the consequences will be if — hopefully we catch it in time before it becomes “when” — the American people and foreign governments (not necessarily in that order) come to realize that the house of cards is unsustainable. That’s why government spending must be slashed and the government’s budget must be brought into balance — and soon.

But even if that occurs, there are serious long-term problems. They come in four major areas:

• Social Security
• Medicare, Medicaid and Health Care
• Military
• All other spending

Social Security’s actuarial deficit was over $7.6 trillion a year ago. The actuarial deficit in Medicare alone is five times as large. As the Baby Boomers continue to retire and age in record numbers, both numbers are moving higher — and quickly.

Sadly, projected spending in the first two categories above threatens to totally wipe out the government’s ability to spend any money in the other two, even though they happen to be the areas where the specifically defined constitutional duties of the federal government (defense, courts, etc.) are carried out.

Today, the PJ Institute, the research and education arm of Pajamas Media, is introducing the National Economic Rescue Initiative (NERI) to the American people. While its timing in the euphoria of the Tea Party wave that has swept the nation is perfect, its overall warning is stark, sobering, and demands action:

Because of decades of overspending by both Democrats and Republicans, our nation will reach a time (possibly around 2020 or sooner) when we can no longer borrow to finance our annual trillion dollar deficit.

If lenders are no longer willing to buy our debt, we will be unable to continue to fund the government’s operations through borrowing. If spending is not drastically cut, Americans will need to pay taxes at much, much higher levels.

What needs to be done to prevent this will involve much more than a little tweaking. It will require a wholesale rethink of what the government is capable of doing and should be doing — and conversely, what individuals, families, and communities are capable of doing better, and should be doing themselves.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that if we continue on our current course, federal debt owed to the public will increase from $9 trillion today to about $550 trillion a mere 70 years from now — and that’s after inflation, while assuming (many believe naively) that the government will be able to continue to borrow at low, risk-free rates.

We’re not kidding. But if 70 years sounds too far off to be believable, how about these intermediate threshold crossings: $20 trillion in 2022, twelve years from now; $40 trillion in 2032, just ten years later; or $100 trillion in 2046? Keep in mind that our current Gross Domestic Product in current dollars is about $14.7 trillion.

Nobody can possibly believe that our current financial path is sustainable.

This is where those reading this column and the American people come into play. Please, go to the NERI web site and educate yourself. Utilize its tools, and then visit its interactive Solutions Design Center.

If it hasn’t become obvious to readers during the past several years, let’s make it obvious now: The time for the American people to assume that the country’s problems can be solved with minimal citizen involvement has ended. Additionally — and this will be addressed in future NERI subscription-based offerings designed to be extremely beneficial yet very affordable — the idea that people can just “wing it” in their own personal money management, retirement savings, and overall financial planning, or play catchup after years of neglect, is similarly over.

This nation does not have the luxury of blowing this off. Failing to deal with the problem while there is still time will condemn future generations to a standard of living which will be a mere shadow of ours, and which will ultimately threaten our form of government, i.e., whether we will continue to genuinely have government of the people, by the people, for the people.

So go there. Take action. Make suggestions. Encourage others to do the same.

The country you help save will be your own.

In Maryland, Prince George’s County’s top elected official, County Executive Jack B. Johnson (pictured at right) was arrested yesterday, and “is accused of accepting cash in return for helping a developer secure federal funding.”

Johnson’s wife, a recently elected councilperson, was also arrested yesterday. The couple are both accused of “tampering with a witness and evidence relating to the commission of a federal offense, and destruction, alteration, and falsification of records in a federal investigation.”

The linked article at Gazette.net does not identify the Johnsons’ political party affiliation. When this failure to identify occurs, it typically means that the politicians involved are Democrats. As expected, the Johnson are indeed Dems (Jack; Leslie).

Sadly, it is not at all surprising that there is a virtual blackout on the Johnsons’ party affiliation:

• An early Associated Press report found at ABC2 in Baltimore (HT to an e-mail from Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion) has no party ID.
• In a more complete item at the Associated Press’s main web site time-stamped just before midnight, reporter Brian Witte tagged Jack Johnson as a Democrat — in his 14th of his 16 paragraphs. That’s “clever,” as most subscribing publications will probably not carry the entire story, and will more than likely not include that particular paragraph.
• In four web pages at the Baltimore Sun carrying a Washington Post story by Paul Schwartzman, Ruben Castaneda and Cheryl W. Thompson, there is one reference to a Democrat — the state’s governor: “The arrests stunned Maryland’s political world, in which Jack Johnson has been a player for a generation. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, described it as a “sad day for Prince George’s County and for County Executive Johnson and his family” (the story as carried at the Post merely includes a “(D)” next to O’Malley’s name). A casual reader cold infer that O’Malley was taking pity on a politician from another party.

Here are selected paragraphs from Witte’s AP story:

FBI: Top county official, wife tried to hide cash

A married pair of top officials in a Maryland county is accused of tampering with evidence after FBI agents said they recorded the husband telling his wife to flush a $100,000 check from a real estate developer down the toilet and to stuff almost $80,000 in cash in her underwear.

… In an affidavit filed in federal court, FBI agents wrote that they recorded a mobile phone conversation between the Johnsons after agents went knocking on their door.

After Johnson told his wife, “Don’t answer it,” he instructed her over the phone to go upstairs to their bedroom and destroy the check, the affidavit said.

“Tear it up! That is the only thing you have to do,” Johnson told his wife, according to the affidavit.

Leslie Johnson then could be heard asking her husband, “Do you want me to put it down the toilet?”

The county executive responded, “Yes, flush that,” according to the affidavit, which noted that monitoring agents heard a flushing sound in the background.

Johnson then told his wife to put cash in her underwear, according to the affidavit.

… U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said authorities have tapped Jack Johnson’s phone since January 2010. Prosecutors expect more charges to be filed and more people to be charged.

Jack Johnson, 61, has been county executive since 2002; his term ends in three weeks. The Democrat was the county state’s attorney for eight years before that. Born in Charleston, S.C., Johnson attended Benedict College and got his law degree from Howard University, where his wife was also a law student.

The WaPo/Baltimore Sun story also notes that Johnson “appeared on the cover of The New York Times magazine in 1992 for an article, titled “The New Black Suburbs’” (article posted here). The article described Prince George’s County as “fast becoming the closest thing to utopia that black middle-class families could find in America.” The level of corruption described in connection with the Johnsons would appear to indicate that if it ever was, it’s not any more.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Baghdad:

Nov 11, 2010 / 01:36 pm

Confronting one’s own mortality on a daily basis can be overwhelming, but deployed servicemen take comfort and strength from prayers offered on the home front, according to Army chaplain Father Brian Kane.

Fr. Brian Kane, a priest of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, is presently deployed for the second time in Iraq. He is Chaplain for the 67th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade and oversees four battalion unit ministry teams which serve over 1,400 soldiers across the country.

“It is humbling for me to serve such a dedicated group of men and women every day,” he told CNA in a Thursday e-mail interview. “To put on the uniform, to stand and salute when the National Anthem is being played, to fold the flag after it has been draped on the casket of a fallen soldier, these are all privileges of those who serve.”

Deployed troops share the same spiritual needs as those at home, but the unique characteristics of life in a combat zone add other stresses.

“Soldiers are faced with their own mortality each day,” he commented. Even though many are not in imminent danger, bases still receive indirect fire in rocket attacks and convoys are attacked with IEDs.

Circumstances often force soldiers to consider “where they stand in their faith and what their relationship with God looks like,” Fr. Kane said. At the same time, they are away from spouses and other family members who encourage them in religious practice. Both a shortage of priests and busy work schedules keep Catholic soldiers from Mass.

The chaplain recalled his first deployment in Iraq during the U.S. offensive, when it was “very difficult” for him to minister to service members who were wounded or killed.

“To be able to stand at the bedside of a young man who is close to his last breath and console him with the sacrament of the sick, or to lean over and hear the confession of a soldier who has lost an arm or leg is a pertinent reminder to me of why we have priests deployed in a combat zone.”

Fr. Kane also recounted his helicopter landing at a small base one Christmas Eve. He was met by two young Marines who wanted to go to Confession before Christmas Mass, but were afraid the long line already formed at the chapel would prevent them.

“I was able to hear their confessions as we walked to the chapel,” he reported, adding that he also heard all the confessions of those standing in line.

In addition to Catholic Bible studies and RCIA classes, Catholic chaplains try to help soldiers grow in their faith throughout their deployment by providing Mass and Confession when a priest is available.

Asked how those at home can support deployed service members, Fr. Kane replied:

“Our greatest help comes from the prayers of everyone at home. Knowing we are surrounded by a mantle of prayer encourages us to keep going in the face of difficulty. Prayer is very powerful.

“I have seen firsthand how a soldier’s prayers as well as the prayers of others have saved them from injury or even death. When we hear from home that prayers are being offered for us it is a comfort and strength.

“Each person here knows that today could be their last,” the chaplain continued. “They know they did not have to volunteer to serve, yet they do. Our country should be proud of the men and women who make up the armed forces.”

Go here for the rest of the story. …

Along with the cheerful news that Fox News trounced its cable news competitors on Election Night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), those longing for more fairness and balance in television news coverage can take some comfort in the fact that the Big Three Networks’ evening news shows came in with audiences almost 20% lower during the week before and the week of the 2010 midterm elections compared to the same two weeks in 2006.

As seen below, NBC took the smallest hit of the three networks, losing an average of “only” 1.2 million viewers in the two comparative weeks involved. ABC got hit harder, while CBS lost nearly 3 in 10 viewers:

Combine the above with the news of Fox’s 2006-2010 improvement, CNN’s serious decline, and MSNBC a stable but still-distant third, and it’s clear that viewers continue to move towards fair and balanced coverage.

Faster, please.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Rush mentioned this when he opened his show today, and it deserves a bit of graphic support.

The graphic at the top right is a picture of the top right corner of today’s New York Times print edition (it’s also here at the Times until tomorrow’s print edition comes out, and graphically captured here for future reference).

The headline, as you can see, is: “Obama’s Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage.” Ouch. But there’s also a story about the story, specifically concerning its stinging headline.

The headline’s harsh assessment was apparently too much for someone involved with the Times’s online operations to handle. After appearing for several hours with the original headline (we know this because the story containing the print edition headline was commented upon just before 10:00 p.m. last night at Lucianne.com, among many other blogs and web sites, before the print edition appeared), the online headline was changed to “Obama’s Trade Strategy Runs Into Stiff Resistance.” Zheesh.

Well, at least the story by Sewell Chan, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David E. Sanger appears not to have changed — yet. The San Jose Mercury News picked up the first seven paragraphs online with the original headline, and the text matches what the Times currently has.

Here are the first five paragraphs of the story, including the critical fourth paragraph, which logically led to the use of the headline originally employed:

President Obama’s hopes of emerging from his Asia trip with the twin victories of a free trade agreement with South Korea and a unified approach to spurring economic growth around the world ran into resistance on all fronts on Thursday, putting Mr. Obama at odds with his key allies and largest trading partners.

The most concrete trophy expected to emerge from the trip eluded his grasp: a long-delayed free trade agreement with South Korea, first negotiated by the Bush administration and then reopened by Mr. Obama, to have greater protections for American workers.

And as officials frenetically tried to paper over differences among the Group of 20 members with a vaguely worded communiqué to be issued Friday, there was no way to avoid discussion of the fundamental differences of economic strategy. After five largely harmonious meetings in the past two years to deal with the most severe downturn since the Depression, major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil.

Each rejected core elements of Mr. Obama’s strategy of stimulating growth before focusing on deficit reduction. Several major nations continued to accuse the Federal Reserve of deliberately devaluing the dollar last week in an effort to put the costs of America’s competitive troubles on trading partners, rather than taking politically tough measures to rein in spending at home.

The result was that Mr. Obama repeatedly found himself on the defensive. He and the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, had vowed to complete the trade pact by the time they met here; while Mr. Obama insisted that it would be resolved “in a matter of weeks,” without the pressure of a summit meeting it was unclear how the hurdles on nontariff barriers to American cars and beef would be resolved.

I have a feeling that someone at the Times might be in deep doo-doo with Pinch Sulzberger & Co. Chan, Stolberg, and Sanger might also be squirming a bit.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Thursday evening, Ken Shepherd at NewsBusters accurately pointed out how little establishment press interest there has been in prominently carrying an Associated Press report about how the Obama administration has been, in the words of the wire service’s Dina Cappiello, “downplaying scientific findings, misrepresenting data and most recently misconstruing the opinions of experts it solicited.”

This is not to excuse those who have given her report short shrift, but the AP and Cappiello herself did their level best to try to minimize the significance of what was to come in their headline and first paragraph, respectively:

Govt’s handling of science on oil spill questioned

The oil spill that damaged the Gulf of Mexico’s reefs and wetlands is also threatening to stain the Obama administration’s reputation for relying on science to guide policy.

First, as to the “Please don’t read this, it’s really boring” headline:

• This isn’t about some abstract entity known as the “Gov’t.” It’s about a presidential administration headed by Barack Obama and populated with environmental extremists like Carol Browner and Ken Salazar. The headlines during Hurricane Katrina were about “the government.” No, they were about George W. Bush’s alleged mishandling of the situation (which was in reality largely the fault of Louisiana’s governor and the mayor New Orleans.
• “Handling of science of oil spill” — How about “misrepresenting facts of oil spill”?
• “Questioned” — What a weasel word. How about “criticized,” “skewered,” “condemned,” or “faulted”?

As to the administration’s “reputation for relying on science,” since when?

To name just three examples:

• The administration continues to push for radical controls over almost everything anyone does in the form of cap and trade legislation based on scientifically unsupported and largely discredited notions relating to supposedly human-caused global warming — er, climate change — oh, I meant climate disruption.
• The administration continues to support life-destroying embryonic stem cell research when adult stem cell research is where virtually all meaningful medical progress has been achieved.
• It deliberately modified the Bush administration’s successful PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) program for fighting AIDS in Africa to minimize and mostly exclude abstinence education, even though “No generalized HIV epidemic has ever been rolled back by a prevention strategy primarily based on condoms.”

Cappiello’s first paragraph attempts to tell readers that what follows in the rest of her report represents a rare exception. Sorry, ma’am, it’s more like the rule.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Uncle Sam’s Monthly Treasury Statement for October, typically a very slow month for collections, shows that the government took in $146 billion during the month, up 8% from $135.2 billion in October 2009.

That’s nice, but to get to the Congressional Budget Office’s projected $2.648 trillion in receipts (go to Page 3 at link) by the time the fiscal year ends on September 30, 2011, collections will have to increase by 22.5% over fiscal 2009′s $2.162 trillion.

In other words, they’re already running way behind (by about $18 billion — no, make that almost $20 billion) where they need to be to keep the coming year’s deficit from being higher than the projected $1.066 trillion.

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You have to wonder if this is what rank and file UAW workers expected when their leadership ran to the loving arms of the Obama administration for $50 billion to bail out bankrupt General Motors last year:

General Motors Co is in the final stage of talks to sell equity to long-time Chinese partner SAIC Motor Corp in conjunction with its landmark initial public offering, two people familiar with the matter said.

The two government-funded automakers are currently finalizing how much of a stake SAIC would buy in the top U.S. automaker after discussions involving technology sharing and SAIC’s ambitions to move beyond the China market, the sources said.

You also have to wonder, given that both governments are involved, if there isn’t an implied Chinese threat to stop buying U.S. bonds lurking in the background of these discussions — or even a specifically stated up-front threat.

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At Pajamas Media, Zombie has the definitive pair of posts on gerrymandering:

• Gerrymandering 101
• The Top Ten Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts in the United States

The second post also has a number of runners-up.

They are must reads. They are not necessarily enjoyable. In fact, they are infuriating.

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From the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” Dept.:

Obama panel probes stimulus waste — at Ritz Carlton

Members of a key panel created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, have scheduled a meeting on November 22 to consider ways to prevent “fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds.” The meeting will be held at the super-luxe Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

The group is the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, a sub-committee of the larger Recovery Accountability and Transparency board (sometimes known as the RAT board). The stimulus bill set up the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, or RIAP, to make recommendations to identify and prevent waste of the bill’s $814 billion in stimulus spending.

Okay, the choice of venue is obviously offensive.

But isn’t it far more offensive that they’re finally coming up with “recommendations to identify and prevent waste” 21 months after the stimulus bill became law? It’s a little late for the “prevent” part.

From Life News in Washington:

11/11/10 2:29 PM

Of course it was huge news last week that the GOP made tremendous gains in Congress, but those election results seem to have drown out an even more impressive wave in state legislatures.

Republicans picked up 680 seats which is the largest ever for them. The only other turnover that comes close was the 1974 elections following the Watergate scandal in which Democrats picked up 628 seats in state legislatures.

This is of vital importance to pro-lifers because chances of passing pro-life legislation are dead in the water in legislatures controlled by pro-abortion Democrats. There are a total of 99 state-level chambers [houses and senates]. After the mid-term elections, the GOP has majorities in 58. For some states, this is the first time the GOP has had control of both chambers.

Thus it is immensely important to maintain focus and coordination to ensure that the pro-life movement capitalizes on these conditions to advance the cause. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Before critiquing, I should recognize that USA Today, while most of the establishment press has snoozed, has done a very creditable job of exposing the wide differential between federal employee and private-sector pay (Aug. 10, 2010; “Federal workers earning double their private counterparts”), and of identifying the outrageous degree by which salaries in the upper levels of Uncle Sam’s empire are expanding (Dec. 11, 2009; “For feds, more get 6-figure salaries”).

Yesterday, in a mostly well-done report, USAT’s Dennis Cauchon, who also authored the two linked items in the previous paragraph, delved into many of the details concerning the growing number of federal employees who get paid $150,000 or more per year. Among his more important points is the fact that a great deal of the expansion into this high level of pay has occurred since President Obama took office, during a period when overall inflation has been very low:

More federal workers’ pay tops $150,000

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

… Federal salaries have grown robustly in recent years, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Office of Personnel Management data. Key findings:

• Government-wide raises. Top-paid staff have increased in every department and agency. The Defense Department had nine civilians earning $170,000 or more in 2005, 214 when Obama took office and 994 in June.
• Long-time workers thrive. The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years. Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate.
• Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and elsewhere earn an average of $179,500, up from $111,000 in 2005.

Federal workers earning $150,000 or more make up 3.9% of the workforce, up from 0.4% in 2005.

Since 2000, federal pay and benefits have increased 3% annually above inflation compared with 0.8% for private workers, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Members of Congress earn $174,000, up from $141,300 in 2000, an increase below the rate of inflation.

Jessica Klement, government affairs director at the Federal Managers Association, says the government’s official pay analysis shows that federal workers earn less than private workers for comparable jobs. Still, she says, managers are willing to give up next year’s (Obama-proposed 1.4%) raise: “If it will help the country bounce back, they’re willing to make the sacrifice.”

Well, that’s mighty nice of Ms. Klement, but she, and Cauchon, overlooked a few key points:

• The first is that even if there is no officially declared pay raise this year, most federal employees will earn — excuse me, “get paid” — more next year. That’s because federal employees also typically receive seniority-based pay hikes known as “step increases.” These typically average about 1.5%. Cauchon made this point in his December 2009 report; he should also have done so in this one.
• I haven’t seen the “official pay analysis” for “comparable jobs” to which Ms. Klement refers. But I’d like to see the study telling me that “comparable” doctors have seen their earnings climb by 62% ($179,500 divided by $111,000) in the past five years.
• Again regarding the “pay analysis,” I’d like to see the reports documenting which “comparable jobs” in the private sector have 5-year track records of pay increases of triple the overall rate of inflation. I will suggest that this has occurred somewhere between rarely and never in “comparable” private-sector occupations.
• A comparison of salaries is fine, but a complete picture would have to consider the entire compensation and benefits package, which is far more generous in the government than what is found in the private sector. Cauchon did look at benefits in his August report on federal vs. private pay on the whole, and found that federal civilian benefits average $41,791, compared to $10,589 in the private sector.

There are several comparative points I’m leaving on the table, including but not limited to relative job-loss risk and number of hours worked.

Burgeoning federal pay is a key explanation as to why federal spending is out of control, and continues to be. USAT’s Cauchon did a good job of documenting his basic findings, but needed to get to the items I noted to give his readers the necessary overall understanding of the just how outrageous and dangerous the situation really is.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.