DOOM: Sun's gonna shine in my backdoor some day

Economic desperation is on the rise. Our government's policy of "ignore, delay, deny, lie, and obfuscate" isn't working. The welfare state is killing us -- that's becoming so obvious that even many liberals can't deny it.

Democrats, the NLRB, Boeing, and jobs. Even liberals are beginning to notice the stink.

No long-term case for equities? Even I’m not that much of a bear (yet), but there is a case to be made. But Treasuries are worse, so if the choice is between a pig and a turd, I’ll take the pig. (See this for why stocks might still be a better bet long-term than bonds.)

Bob “The Bear” Janjuah: Hope is for suckers! We’re doomed!

Brazil has been “the country of the future” for my entire lifetime, but they never quite seem to get there.

It wasn’t just the Philly Fed. The Richmond Fed agrees that the economy really, really sucks.

Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein lawyers up. Re the regulation problem: it wasn’t that banks were under-regulated. It’s that the regulators weren’t doing their jobs.

Alan Greenspan: The Euro is breaking down. Greenspan's credibility isn't what it used to be (what with him totally missing the call on the downturn and all), but it doesn't take a Maestro to see what's going down in Europe. Also, he says that gold is not in a bubble:

The major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It’s not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.

I’m a fan of the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) as an indicator of world economic health, and this article may mean that fears of a recession may be overblown. I'm one of the people who think we're already in a recession, so this BDI number seems like pretty good news to me.

VDH: “Surreal Logic”.

‘The public finally elected a bad Congress to stop me from doing more of what I wanted and which did not work’ is not a rationale for a second term.

Central Falls, RI: The canary in the coal mine.

Brea, California, population 38,000 (give or take). Pension burden? $2963 for every man, woman, and child.

Barack Obama, supply-sider.

This doesn't exactly come as shocking news to me: many bankers do not take their own investment advice. They rarely look out for their clients' interests in the way that they should, but you can count on them to look after their own interests. If you want to know what a banker, broker, or investment adviser really thinks, ask him how he invests his own money.

California is doomed to the tune of $1 Trillion (and counting!).

UPDATE 1: Slower business spending spells trouble.

Economists expect [the durable-goods report from the Commerce Department] to rise about 0.5% in July. Any disappointment would point to a loss of momentum even before the debt-ceiling debacle and stock-market selloff. There have been other cautionary signs, including a slowdown in global demand. Exports peaked in April and have since slid by about 3%.

UPDATE 2: New Jersey, senior member of the LOTB. The Soprano state gets downgraded. Hey, even Chris Christie can't turn a turd into a tea-rose overnight.

UPDATE 3: "Washington needs to wake up to the jobs crisis." Somehow I doubt anything is going to happen until after the 2012 elections. That's bad because the situation is going to deteriorate, but the political parties are just too far apart -- it's going to take another election, and a voter mandate one way or the other, to break up the logjam.

posted by Monty at 08:50 AM

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