Eric S. suggested this Washington Post piece: We’re Borrowing Like Mad. Can the U.S. Pay It Back? [1] And if that weren’t bad enough news, here is the daily glut o’ gloom from The Economatrix: Leading Economist Fears Decade of Economic Weakness [2] — Oil Traders Demand Ships to Store Crude at Sea Before Prices Rebound [3] — Crude Below $40 as Demand Drops Faster than Supply [4] — The Bond Bubble is an Accident Waiting to Happen [5] — UK Auto Workers: Pay Cut or Lose Jobs [6] — Japan Suicide Hotlines Overburdened in Economic Crisis [7] — Merkel Makes 44-Billion U-Turn to Save German Economy [8] — UK Plans $200 Billion Gamble to Restart Mortgage Market [9] — Money is Dead, Long Live Barter [10] — UK Government: Recession Will Fuel Race Tensions [11] — Arizona Treasurer Warns State Running Out of Money [12]
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SF in Hawaii mentioned this article from Australia: The jobs most at risk in 2009 [13]
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Kenya: 10 million risk hunger after harvests fail [14]. (Thanks to Danny B. for the link.)
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Scott N. spotted this Wall Street Journal commentary: ‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years [15]. Scott also suggested reviewing CBO Acting Director Robert Sunshine’s recent Senate testimony [16]. Scott’s comment: “I’m watching this on C-SPAN. Sunshine is testifying on the state of the current recession before a congressional committee, on Thursday, 1/8/09. He states that if this were a typical recession, we’d already be pulling out of it by this time. In the current recession, however, we haven’t even hit the worst yet (e.g., here come the Alt-A and Option ARM mortgage defaults in 2009, credit cards after that, collapse of Baltic Dry index, etc.). He’s estimating 2014 before we’re back to full economic potential. It’s a damning report. ‘It’s not a terribly optimistic forecast,’ Sunshine says. Quite the master of understatement. We could use a little bit more sunshine on what going on in Washington, DC. The rest of the CBO Macroeconomic analysis team is not much more optimistic either.” JWR Adds: Don’t miss the chart early in the video clip that shows the Federal debt ballooning to 400 times the GDP by 2058. For those that would prefer to study the text of Sunshine’s report, see this PDF [17].