Bush's Economy

So, you think things are bad? The Washington Post can tell you just how bad, in glorious, sickening detail:

President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists …

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On the origins of the crisis

CJR has a fantastic interview with Michael Hudson on the origins of the financial crisis, and his background reporting on poverty issues becomes extremely relevant. It’s one of the best resources I’ve seen, with about a dozen links to background …

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I wonder...

… how many conservative chatterboxes have actually heard Pelosi’s “hyper-partisan” speech (transcript, video). Maybe hyper-partisan speech is, like, subliminal, or something, but I don’t see anything here to get all offended …

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It's the economy, stupid

Hidden in the intro to this BusinessWeek article — ostensibly about the health-care industry — is an jaw-dropping nugget of information. See if you find it:

If you really want to understand what makes the U.S. economy tick these days, don’t …

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George Speaks, Badly - New York Times

Fun, if slightly snarky (and a little late?) op-ed by Gail Collins in yesterday's NYT:

We’re really past expecting anything much, but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. Suddenly …

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Heavy weighs the head, indeed

We saw The Queen this weekend (at a packed house - I can't remember the last time we saw a movie on opening weekend.)

The movie focuses on the royal family in the wake of Tony Blair's election as Prime Minister through the death and mourning of Diana …

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NYT on Organic Wal-Mart

The NYT has an excellent article on new organic trends at Wal-Mart and the economic impact. The entire article is worth reading, but here's my favorite nugget:

Wal-Mart will buy its organic food from whichever producers can produce it most cheaply …

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Starbucks Economics

The difficulty is that if some of your products are cheap, you may lose money from customers who would willingly have paid more. So, businesses try to discourage their more lavish customers from trading down by making their cheap products look or sound …

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