“This crisis doesn’t wear you down over time. It hits you over the head with a two-by-four. On a daily basis.”
— Joe Nocera, The New York Times
Category: Economics
It’s my college degree, so I’m going to talk about it
McCain Out of Sync With Economy
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell just over 500 points today, the largest point drop since July, 2002, but according to the Huffington Post, one of the presidential candidates still doesn’t get it:
John McCain may want to refine his economic message a bit more during this potentially disastrous week for the financial sector.
On the campaign trail in Jacksonville, Florida, the Senator declared this morning that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” despite what he described as “tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street.”
In a period when many investors have seen as much as 7 years of stock market gains wiped out in just two weeks, how can the economy’s fundamentals be strong? The jobless rate is up, consumer spending is weakening, people are leveraging their credit cards more to cover expenses, property foreclosures are significantly higher…
Misery Index Hits 17 Year High
The Misery Index is the combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. It reached 11.3% in July.
While still well below its heights in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Misery Index is now at its highest level since the first George Bush was president according to data from www.miseryindex.us.
Five Years Later
Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, and served as yet another reminder of the colossal misuse of time, energy, and funding:
And where the money could have been spent:
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