Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
As promised, probably one of the funniest hours of tv ever:
For non-Hulu users, TDS is here, here, and here.
And if that wasn’t good enough for you, the Colbert Report spend the entire episode mocking that idiot Glenn Beck:
The best part of the top clip with Stewart skewing CNBC is that for once, while still funny, Stewart looks really pissed and disgusted. As anyone with sense would be.
We Would Never Shoot Nuclear Weapons at Decepticons, Ever.Post + Comments (124)
From Bloomberg:
U.S. worker productivity in the fourth quarter unexpectedly fell as the economy shrank even faster than companies cut jobs and hours.
Productivity, a measure of employee output per hour, fell at a 0.4 percent annual rate, the first decrease in a year and much less than the 3.2 percent gain estimated last month, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Labor costs climbed 5.7 percent, more than prior projections.
Not to speculate, but I suspect that a lot of workers got lazy once Obama was elected, because they knew they knew we’d soon have a cradle-to-grave welfare state where all of their money would be taxed.
My financial friend writes:
Productivity is effectively calculated as production/hours, which since we have a massive oversupply of capacity right now it means that demand has dropped so the only solution is to chop more jobs.
Productivity right now is directly related to job cuts – slash jobs productivity climbs because we’re fully demand based right now.
My theory – Gdp shrinkage is faster than job shrinkage so job cuts need to accelerate to keep pace.
How f-ing scary is that?
Excerpt from an interview with the great Jim Glassman:
So, ten years ago you predicted the Dow would reach 36,000. This week, the Dow fell to its lowest level since 1997, and 6,000 seems more likely than 36,000. On behalf of investors and readers everywhere: What happened?
I think that people who read my columns would consider me a level-headed person who doesn’t get upset, either way, doesn’t have tremendous enthusiasms…..The second point was that based on our calculations, we believed that stocks would rise to roughly 36,000. We said in the book that it is impossible to predict how long it will take for the market to recognize that Dow 36,000 is perfectly reasonable, but then, of course, we did take a guess
You said three to five years
[….]Would you be willing to hazard a guess on where the market will be three to five years from now?
No, and I think if there was a mistake in “Dow 36,000,” it was that we in that one sentence did hazard a guess. We sort of said two different things: It’s impossible to predict when this is going to happen, and then we said, well, we’ll predict it, anyway.
[…..]But you don’t feel the need to apologize to someone that read your book, went in and got creamed?
Absolutely not.
With financial columnists like Glassman and financial talking heads like Jim Cramer and Rick Santelli, it’s no wonder we’re facing the worst depression in 70 years.
Not sure if you saw it, but Jon Stewart just went all John Galt on Santelli, Kramer, Baritromo, and the rest of the hacks at CNBC. I will post it when it goes up. And his next segment about the DOW was just as good.
I think I need a cigarette.
*** Update ***
The whole show was great. I love how he compared CNBC interviewing the Wall Street guys with a weatherman interviewing Hurricane Katrina.
It just never stops:
“The president certainly remains popular, but his policies are becoming less and less popular,” Boehner said, citing the continuing slide in the financial markets. “Certainly the stock market hasn’t acted very well” since Obama’s inauguration.
As the markets continue to falter, Republicans are becoming more confident in their criticisms of the president — some have already taken to using the phrase “the Obama economy.”
Yeah. About that “Obama economy,” Rep. Boehner:
Ironically, Obama’s high marks come at a time when Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the state of the economy. Only 7% say they’re satisfied about the economy, which is an all-time low in the poll. Moreover, 76% believe the economy still has a ways to go before it hits rock bottom. What’s going on here? The public doesn’t blame Obama for the economy — even as critics try to attribute the Dow’s decline to Obama, and also even as Obama yesterday gave stock advice (!!!). Per the poll, 84% say Obama inherited this economy, and two-thirds of those people think he has at least a year before he’s responsible for it.
They aren’t even trying any more. This has gone beyond silly to just sad, and what is even worse for the Republicans is that as they keep saying things that the public knows to be completely untrue, it erodes what little trust they have in them. Think about it. If somebody keeps telling you things you know are false, eventually you just write them off altogether. At the risk of Godwinning this thread, the Republicans really do seem intent on testing the reaches of the Big Lie.
The other thing that strikes me about that poll is how, well, reasonable the American people are. Maybe a year is too long, maybe it is not long enough. But the fact that the majority of the public is willing to wait a while before casting judgment seems exceedingly rational. It is almost if the American people understand how big a deal this current mess is, even as the Republicans continue to play games.
The Goldberg Theorem, defined.
President Obama, yesterday:
“What I am looking for is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market … but the long-term,” Obama told reporters.
“The stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics,” said the president, whose own public job approval has been running at about two-thirds in the Gallup Poll’s daily tracking surveys. “It bobs up and down every day. … If you spend your time worrying about that, you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.’
Renowned economist and market analyst Jonah Goldberg, a little bit ago:
If The Budget Bill Fails
How will the Obama administration explain a stock market rally in response?
One of these two people has the right approach. One of them is an idiot.
By popular request:
Tunch has to be the easiest animal on the planet to photograph. All I need to do is turn around, aim the camera in the general direction of the futon, and I will get a picture of him. Bigfoot he isn’t. I don’t know if all cats are this socialized, but whatever room I am in, Tunch will be there. Sometimes I sneak into another room when he is asleep, and within five minutes he will come into the room, yawn and stretch, and look at me as if I have done something wrong. I wonder if this dynamic will change if I get another cat or maybe a dog.