Let the bad times roll

Via Calculated Risk, this from Rex Nutting of Marketwatch:

The U.S. recession will be “significantly deeper” than they previously thought, Goldman Sachs economists predicted Friday in a research note. The economy will probably show no growth at all between the middle of 2008 and the middle of 2009, with gross domestic product falling 2% this quarter and 1% next, they said. Two other quarters will show 0% GDP growth. The unemployment rate will likely rise to 8% by the end of next year from 6.1% currently.

The analyst is Hatzius, who I’ve always found dourly realistic.

I take this that prediction is for a moderately severe recession, not as bad as Reagan’s, but worse than Herbert Walker Bush’s. Of course, this piece doesn’t say that things when things start getting better.

Roubini is a little more graphic. Quoting a “senior market practitioner”:

Situation Report: So far as I can tell by working the telephones this morning:

LIBOR bid only, no offer.

Commercial paper market shut down, little trading and no issuance.

Corporations have no access to long or short term credit markets — hence they face massive rollover problems.

Brokers are increasingly not dealing with each other.

Even the inter-bank market is ceasing [seizing] up.

This cannot continue for more than a few days. This is the economic equivalent to cardiac arrest.

Just an average hawkie Mawm, my Aunt Fannie/Final

Sarah Palin. What a liar. In the debate, she said ” In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s [paying taxes is] not patriotic.”

Leonard Doyle, The London Independent:

On the campaign trail [and in the debate], Sarah Palin has complained of struggling to pay the bills and this week described herself as “an everyday, working-class American” who knows how it feels when the stock market takes a hit.

But the Palin family income reached comfortably into six figures in her 2007 declaration, capitalising on valuable salmon fishing rights and a series of property deals. Her governor’s salary brought in $125,000 (£71,000), while her husband Todd earned almost $100,000 from his part-time job at BP, combined with income from commercial fishing. The couple appeared to be worth at least $1.2m, including a $500,000 lakefront home, a Piper float-plane and two holiday getaways.

A MILLION DOLLAR NET WORTH IS MIDDLE CLASS?

AN INCOME OF $250,000 IS MIDDLE CLASS?

And yet she tells these lies so easily.

The transcript is here

FactCheck’s toothless fact-checking is here. FactCheck focuses on things that come down to the arcana of how the Senate works and anything that has a number attached to it, but misses the more important places where politicians are trying to disinform voters. As Media Matters points out (via Atrios), FactCheck even manages to get a key fact wrong: John McCain did vote against troop funding. The vote is Roll Call 126 on SR 1591.

Here are what I would consider Palin’s major misleads:

Government of world’s fifth largest economy nears bankruptcy

Dow Jones:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warned U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in a letter emailed Thursday that the state might need an emergency federal loan of up to $7 billion within weeks, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday, citing a copy of the letter that the newspaper obtained.

California, among several states frozen out of the bond market by the credit crunch, is nearly out of cash to fund day-to-day government operations and can’t access routine short-term loans it relies on to remain solvent.

Getting rid of Gray Davis was such a smart thing to do.

Friday Cat Blogging

Alex says, “PLZ IT CAN BE ELEKSHUN IZ OVR KTHXBYE.”