Red state, blue state, purple state, gray state

Here’s a real “holy crap” map:
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

As you watch the thing play, notice the county in southwestern North Dakota where the unemployment rate actually drops. That’s Slope County, population 675, or 0.6 people per square mile.

Because I live here

I haven’t dug much into Dan Proft’s campaign for governor of Illinois, but he definitely gets points for creativity when it comes to his campaign slogan.

“Illinois Isn’t Broken. It’s Fixed.”

If you can’t beat ‘em….

News headline: “Individuals Rushing to Bear-Market Funds From JPMorgan, Pimco”

But the recession is over, right? Happy days are here again and all. Why the bearish sentiment.

Maybe this has something to do with it. And this. And maybe this.

- Chris Clair

The Bear In There
The Wall Street Journal returns to its roots today and demonstrates why, despite Rupert Murdoch, it is still the best financial paper in the world, running the first in a series of three stories on the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. In a story full of the kinds of important little details that are sure to have Bear executives scratching their heads wondering how she got them, Kate Kelley writes that at the outset of the crisis that eventually brought down Bear, the firm was plagued by a combination of bad decisions and indecision.

“… [M]any who lived through the seven tense months before the deal [with JP Morgan Chase & Co.] say Bear Stearns imploded because it was at war with itself. Buffeted by the most treacherous market forces in a generation and hobbled by indecision, the firm’s leaders missed opportunities that might have been able to save the 85-year-old brokerage.”

(more…)

Excluding Food and Gas, Things Are Great. Er, Check That. . . .
We’ve already discussed how the government’s funky way of counting made gas prices go down in April. The other neat trick the government pulls when it reports on so-called “core inflation” is it excludes food and energy prices. The logic is that those are more volatile and so less indicative of longer term trends. This smoothing pretty much disregards two items that eat up a good portion of many people’s take-home pay, but no matter. It’s the stuff outside food and energy where things matter, and economic apologists always point to the core PPI figure as evidence that inflation shouldn’t be a major worry.
(more…)

Fading into Irrelevance
It’s probably just the side of the bed I woke up on this morning, or the way the day has gone in general, but two stories caught my eye this afternoon in a way that seemed to point to the irrelevance of government with respect to solving problems.
(more…)