Barack Hoover?
The administration has apparently ditched Keynesian economics in favor of Philistine economics, calling for a domestic spending freeze or even spending cuts in the midst of double-digit unemployment. The Associated Press has the story here. Focusing on deficit reduction during a depression did not work for Herbert Hoover in 1932, and I’m at a loss to see why Obama’s economists are embracing spending cuts now.  The article does quote budget director Peter Orszag as saying cutting spending too fast could undermine the recovery, so I can only hope that they do not mean to make t

Turn on the news
This morning brings the news that unemployment has reached double digits for the first time since 1983, rising from 9.8% to 10.2%.  And the U.S. economy has had a net loss of jobs for 22 straight months, the longest on record, dating back 70 years (to, yes, the end of the Great Depression).  There are 15.7 million unemployed, including a record 5.6 million who have been unemployed for six months or more. Since the recession officially began in December 2007, the number of unemployed has more than doubled, by 8.2 million. The U-6 u

Must-read: How Goldman Sachs bet on the housing crash
. . . while selling $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities that it claimed were safe.  The article, by Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers, is based on a five-month investigation.

Just words
This week’s news from the Commerce Department is that real GDP grew at a 3.5% annualized rate in the 3rd quarter of 2009, which is the best quarterly growth rate in two years.  And some economists, including the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER’s) Jeffrey Frankel, are saying the recession probably ended sometime this summer.  Meanwhile, a poll of MSNBC readers finds that 82% think the recession is still raging, 9% think the economists are right, and 9% don̵

Situation vacant
It must be cold comfort to the 14.5 million unemployed Americans to hear that unemployment is a “lagging indicator” and that the job market should pick up sometime after the economy picks up.  Especially when the signals for the economy itself are still mixed.  The most frightening news is that there are currently six unemployed job seekers for every vacant position out there.  And even that’s counting only the “officially” unemployed and not the underemployed or the jobless people who’ve given up looking.  The NYT has the story here. The Kinks h