All You Babies Are Gonna Be Wearin' Gold-Plated Diapers

Factory orders up, up, up. Big time, as the man says:

The Commerce Department said factory orders advanced 4.3 percent in March, the strongest rise in nearly two years, after gaining a revised 1.1 percent in February.

Wall Street had forecast orders to gain a more modest 2.3 percent in March and the surge, which came as the Fed signaled it was preparing to raise interest rates, points to an upward revision in first quarter gross domestic product.

Whoops. The media spun the 4.2% as "disappointing," and we cautioned that 1) it was vigorous growth by any standard, even the high bar for success set by the media in order to justify painting Bush's economic policies as a failure and 2) the number would likely be revised upwards, anyway.

The Fed, meantime, left interest rates at historic lows and stated that the inevitable rate hikes would be "measured." That's not really within Bush's control, of course, but it does seem that his policies make Greenspan comfortable with holding rates low.

We apologize if this constant barrage of economic news gets boring. Yeah, you can get all this yourself on yahoo, of course. But there are three issues in this race -- terrorism/Iraq, the economy, and "everything else," and Bush wins on terrorism, is currently losing on the economy, and pushes on "everything else," which doesn't matter anyway, because we lied: There are only two issues in this race, and "everything else" ain't one of them.

John Kerry can't win when he's trailing on both of the only two issues in the race.

posted by Ace at 07:18 AM

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