Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Consistently wrong since 2002

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Everybody saw this coming.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Bust

Bust

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Slide:

The U.S. economy unexpectedly lost jobs in January for the first time in more than four years, adding to the case for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates further next month to head off a recession.

Payrolls fell by 17,000 after an 82,000 gain in December that was larger than initially reported, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The jobless rate declined to 4.9 percent from 5 percent in December.

The drop in payrolls, in the wake of tighter credit, a deeper housing slump and a stumbling stock market, is the clearest sign yet that the U.S. expansion is at risk. Payrolls are one of the indicators, along with wages, production and sales, that help determine the start of economic contractions.

Yes, Virginia. I think the expansion is in danger.

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    cleek

    Payrolls are one of the indicators, along with wages, production and sales, that help determine the start of economic contractions.

    how far apart are the contractions?

    someone go boil some water.

  2. 2.

    D0n Camillo

    If this has been the expansion, I don’t even want to imagine what the contraction is going to be like.

  6. 6.

    Phoenix Woman

    The bust-out’s nearly complete, though I’m sure Bush had hoped it wouldn’t have revealed itself until after January 21, 2009.

    Everything we were told was solid was in fact hollowed out and replaced by worthless pieces of paper with nothing backing them except equally-empty promises.

  9. 9.

    Rex

    I think that we can probably redefine how we have been doing the statistics in order to maintain the economic expansion. Only a member of the reality based community would presume that a little irregularity with payrolls means that this economy is not fundamentally strong. Now go out and see some of our great destinations!

  10. 10.

    D. Pantload

    Falling employment, a soft housing market and a bearish stock market are not refutations to my argument that this economy is only second to Reagan’s in terms of super-duperosity. Indeed, these supposedly negative factors are central to my point. Employees, employers, homeowners and even stockbrokers are all clearly liberals, determined to throw red paint on the soft, silky fur of Republican Economic Genius (hereafter REG). The extent of their derangement is evidenced in that they are making REG look bad even though it means taking a financial hit themselves.

    Also, since capitalism is founded on the concept of rational self-interest, and these people are clearly not behaving that way, it only goes to prove that they are anti-capitalist, and therefore both liberals and fascists who would do anything to embarrass classical Manchester Liberals like myself and the people I talk to. Obviously, it is impossible to form a discourse with such manifestly irrational people.

    Others have made this case before, but never with such detail or care.

  12. 12.

    Neal

    Dooomed! Doooooomed I tells ya!

    No. Really.

    Doooooooomed!

    Doomed like in Cannibal the Musical?
    Doomed…you’re all doomed…
    Doomed…

  13. 13.

    Dennis - SGMM

    The economy is fundamentally strong. How can an economy based on home refinancing and selling each other lattes and haircuts not be strong? Just a few more tax cuts and America will once more be saying “Extra foam on mine!”

    Our huge manufacturing base, our pool of skilled labor, our reserves of capitol, our overabundance of natural resources, our high wages,
    our affordable housing,
     our world class educational system,

  14. 14.

    4tehlulz

    No, this is good news! This means that the Fed will dole out delicious candy to Wall Street lower interest rates to kill the dollar defend the economy.

  15. 15.

    Wilfred

    It’s deja vu all over again:

    The bourgeoisie…has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

    That last sentence pretty much covers the Republican party.

    The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.

    The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.

    That covers the rest.

  17. 17.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    Also, since capitalism is founded on the concept of rational self-interest, and these people are clearly not behaving that way, it only goes to prove that they are anti-capitalist, and therefore both liberals and fascists who would do anything to embarrass classical Manchester Liberals like myself and the people I talk to. Obviously, it is impossible to form a discourse with such manifestly irrational people.

    Hey! Where’s my cool mustache?

  19. 19.

    TenguPhule

    Every time you bend over, an NSA agent spying on you gets a boner.

    And there’s still no Santa Claus.

  20. 20.

    pharniel

    the universe is doomed…dooom…dooom….dooooom…dooom…doom
    *bell ring*
    you go home now!
    – Mrs. Bitters, Invader ZIm

    anyway, we have a paulbot at the office here, and for the most part i’ve been keeping low, but then I heard paul say the stupidest fucking i’ve ever heard in a debate, right after the smartest thing i’ve ever heard:
    after stating that the president is only commander in chief of the country and that he has little direct influence over the economy, so trying to get the government to kick start it is a fools errand (it usually is) he then said that fiat money and the fed and the ‘over regulation’ were resonsible for booms and busts, and that before that the country never had booms and busts.

    now in college we studied 1870 america to 1900 america for all of ten minutes, but the thing we had to write down for the test was “known for the serious and major economic booms and busts that occured throughout the era”

    in short, effective regulation smooths out the highs and lows, but eliminates the dizziying hights and crashing lows.

    kinda like good medication.
    and if the uber ritch are feinding for that economic high they can go buy thier own fucking country to ruin.

  21. 21.

    jenniebee

    Wilfred – it’s more like the bourgeosie has separated itself out and the big winners have created a new feudal state. These days, they’re using a potent combination of Free Market rhetoric and religiosity to newly justify a medieval social order, minus all that cumbersome noblesse oblige that put a drag on aristocrats’ cash flow and made them vulnerable to bourgois encroachment in the first place.

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