The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

VIDEO: Hey, the Economy Sucks

In this Bloomberg TV interview, Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities, doesn’t really have any good news and says he expects housing prices to decline another 7% in the next year: By the way, I’m not a big fan of using “consumer confidence” as an economic indicator, as if mere mood were a […]

VIDEO: Violent Riots Break Out in Athens as Greek Parliament Faces Key Debt Vote

Here is raw video of today’s riots in Athens: Greece has no alternative to passing the austerity plan if it wishes to prevent default on its debt, Reuters reports: Anti-austerity protests turned violent in Athens on Tuesday as the European Union warned Greek lawmakers the country faces immediate default unless they back an unpopular economic […]

Happy Anniversary, ‘Recovery Summer’

VIDEO: Greek Meltdown?

Here are a couple of video reports from EuroNews about this week’s big economic question: Can Greece deal with its debt crisis or will default trigger a global economic meltdown? At the Hot Air Green Room: The good news, such as it is: French banks have reportedly agreed to a plan to roll over Greek […]

Expecting the Unexpected

The media have nearly warn out an adverb — “Unexpectedly!” — in describing bad economic news in the past two years. So what should we expect when we read a sentence that begins like this? “Few economists are predicting an out-and-out return to recession, but . . .” Which prompts concerns for the Lonely Conservative: Um, are […]

Euro-Doom Looming?

The Standard & Poor 500 this week suffered its seventh week of losses in the past eight weeks, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average again closed below 12,000 on Friday. The problem? In a word, Europe: “Everybody is trying to digest how the European debt situation is going to shake out,” said Jason Pride, director […]

Boeing and the Myth of ‘Skills’

Back during the 1990s, I got tired of hearing a line that Bill Clinton relentlessly repeated about the need to “invest” in education to provide “the skills needed to compete in the 21st-century economy.” As nice as that rhetoric sounds, it didn’t match the economic reality: Major manufacturers weren’t opening new factories in Latin America […]

He’s Got His. Have You Got Yours?

A sad bit of bitter irony: While unemployment among the general population is about 9.1 percent, it’s at 16.2 percent African Americans, and a bit higher still for African American males. . . . [N]ow it’s at Depression-era levels. The most recent figures show African American joblessness at 16.2 percent. For black males, it’s at […]

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