rdan Steve Bennen notes in the Washington Monthly: BOEHNER…. In the first weekly Republican radio address under the new administration, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) touted the GOP’s vision for an economic recovery. “Our plan is rooted in the philosophy that we cannot borrow and spend our way back to prosperity,” Boehner stated. The […]

rdanPresident Obama’s first weekly address and video available to peruse.

A reader in comments asked why the Bears had not posted on Obama’s stimulus plan. Well, speaking for myself, that was mostly because we didn’t have a plan and still don’t. What we have is the shifting outline of a plan subject to negotiation between the Admin and the Congress, leaving no solid starting point […]

by Divorced one like Bush(Updated to correct my decimal point. I’m bad.) When I talk to others about why we’re in the mess we’re in from a position of income inequality using numbers like $1,025,000,000,000 per year from the 99% to the 1% does impress them, but as I posted a while ago it is […]

cross posted from STR Health Care Think Tank Tom Daschle’s health care book – Part I Senator (retired) Tom Daschle, new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (and health care czar!?) wrote a book in 2008 about the health care system (before he knew about this position I believe). Given Daschle’s major […]

A correspondent notes CJR found a good scoop by the FT: Merrill Lynch paid out about $4 billion in bonuses just days before Bank of America took it over, the Financial Times says this morning. What raises the eyebrows is the timing: Merrill paid its bonuses before the year was even up, “an unusual step” […]

by Bruce Webb(UPDATE: this piece was not drawing any attention so I decided to move it under the fold and save some screen space. But the headline tells the story. He predicted the global slowdown and some specific events in S. Korea and got hauled away in handcuffs. Details below.)Prescient Young Blogger Did What S. […]

By Spencer I have been working on setting up bear market shading in my charts rather than recession shading. The results were so unexpected and striking that I though I would share them. First, like recessions these is not a set definition of a bear market. The generally accepted rule of thumb is over a […]

rdan As the Obama administration issues executive orders and eventually implements policies, we have an obligation to watch how policies mature and how they are actually implemented. As cactus has noted with an old Russian proverb, “Trust, but verify.” Probably a good way to start this year 2009 overall. And the executive branch is only […]

There is a reason I never believe people who judge the health of a company by its credit rating: the evidence isn’t there, and everyone in the market knows it isn’t there. Here is a prime example: General Electric (GE; the company that Jack eviscerated) has a AAA credit rating. It is also paying a […]