You’ll Never Get This 21 Minutes Of Your Life Back
February 5, 2009 10:26 pm

by John Cole

Instapundit, Malkin, and Joe the Plumber discuss politics for PJTV.

There is so much to love about this, I don’t know where to start, but certainly Joe the Plumber bemoaning the lack of spending cuts and general program cuts in the stimulus bill was a highlight. It is almost as if he doesn’t have the first damned clue what he is talking about. A close runner-up would be Instapundit heralding Bush’s MBA as evidence of his awesome managerial skills. There was just so much to love, it is hard to narrow down the "best" parts.

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax.....

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Explanation of Historic Bubble
February 6, 2009 5:03 pm

Neil Beers, Elliott Wave International

A subscriber sent us another great idea this week. He was trying to explain to his brother just how bad things are going to get, but was having a tough time convincing him (not surprisingly). He decided to mark a few of the videos of Bob Prechter's Bloomberg interviews on a chart of the Dow going back to the Oct. '07 high and sent it to his brother -- and it worked! "[The chart] put Bob’s analysis into a perspective that just really hit home with him," he said.

Even a few of us were surprised at how striking the videos looked in the context of that chart. So we took it one step further and plotted 8 of Bob's Bloomberg videos on a Dow chart, each with links to the full videos on YouTube.

Check out the Bob on Bloomberg chart now.

Bob Prechter's Bloomberg Interviews: Oct. 2007 - Oct. 2008

Bob Prechter is founder and CEO of Elliott Wave International, editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist and author of the New York Times Business Bestseller, Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression.

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AP CEO: Bush Turned Military Into Propaganda Machine
February 7, 2009 7:34 am

LAWRENCE, Kan. - The Bush administration turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine while imposing tough restrictions on journalists seeking to give the public truthful reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Associated Press chief executive Tom Curley said Friday.

Curley, speaking to journalists at the University of Kansas, said the news industry must immediately negotiate a new set of rules for covering war because "we are the only force out there to keep the government in check and to hold it accountable."

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What the centrists have wrought
February 7, 2009 10:37 pm

Paul Krugman

I’m still working on the numbers, but I’ve gotten a fair number of requests for comment on the Senate version of the stimulus.

The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.

According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger.

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.

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Why The Limits on Wall Street Pay Are For Show
February 8, 2009 2:05 pm

Robert Reich

......So why is Wall Street so upset about the faux $500,000 limit? Precisely because of its symbolism. It's as if the administration is planning to subject executives of the banks that take the next dolop of bailout money to a kind of public shaming -- the equivalent of a scarlet G, for greed -- when the executives don't view the bailout that way at all. Few if any of them think they did anything wrong in the first place; they don't even view the bailout as a "bailout" but rather as a necessary injection of liquidity to keep credit markets going.

By the way, get ready for some really horrifying bailout numbers. Goldman Sachs -- not one to exaggerate the overall problem -- recently estimated the total value of troubled U.S. bank assets to be $5.7 trillion. Hence, do not be surprised if the next stage of the bank bailout dwarfs the cost of the stimulus package. My guess is that's reason the administration wants the stimulus bill approved before it fully unveils the price tag of the next bank bailout.

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Job Losses: Comparing Recessions (Second Chart Added)
February 8, 2009 7:55 pm

The second shows percentage of jobs lost (not the unemployment rate).

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