As the average US citizen drags his wounded semi-corpse of a body across 2009’s finish line, it is heartwarming and life-affirming to know that the bloodsucking lobbyists are raking it in like never before down in Washington D.C. From Politico via the CATO Institute: K Street is raking it in. Washington’s influence industry is on track…
Economy
The Great Recession's Ten Commandments
One: I am The Great Recession that snapped you out of your debt binge and brought the entire world to its knees, thou shalt compare no other recessions to me.
Holiday Season Spending Infographic from GOOD
The good folks at GOOD have an infographic look at holiday spending posted with some really interesting facts. One must take some of this stuff with a grain of salt as 2007 data is the predominant source. Things were different back then – most of us had a pot to piss in. Happy Holidays 2009,…
About That Climate Change/ Health Care Sideshow…
As I have repeatedly said, the President’s biggest misstep has been his pursuit of climate change policy and health care reform ahead of financial stability and banking reform. Everything that was broken when he was elected is still broken, millions more have no jobs to go to and yet Obama and friends are still dicking…
FOMC Statement Parsing
The FOMC’s non-event policy statement just came out. Needless to say, no change in rates. Here are a few snippets… Interest rates will remain near zero “for an extended period”. “Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in November suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up and that the deterioration in…
about those lagging indicators…
By Tom Toles
Federal Debt Ceiling: What's Another $1.8 Trillion?
Source: Federal Debt Ceiling (IndyStar)
November Retail Sales Up On Gasoline, Autos Not a Factor
Real quick, looks like we have a gain over October and a better-than-expected number overall for November Retail Sales. And the “clunkers” were irrelevant… From CNNMoney: Retail sales jumped 1.3% in November, according to the Commerce Department, well more than the expected increase. Economists had expected retail sales to rise 0.6% from October, according to…
Where Does the Money Go?
The below infograph from Flowing Data gives us a good idea about what we as US consumers spend our money on. The data goes back 25 years so you can see the trend in each category of expenditure. If they had just used data from my spending, you’d see separate line items for brick oven pizza and Ghostface…
Free Can of Beans With the Purchase of a House
Only in America, circa 2009. This ad from Clayton Homes is actually running on the Columbia Daily Herald‘s website right now:
