Pressure Drop

Citigroup, the nation’s largest bank, reported a staggering fourth-quarter loss of $9.83 billion on Tuesday and issued a sobering forecast that the housing market and the broader economy still had not bottomed out.

To shore up their financial condition, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which has also been rocked by the subprime mortgage debacle, both were forced again to go hat in hand for cash infusions from investors in the United States, Asia and the Middle East, for a combined total of nearly $19.1 billion.

Citigroup’s gloomy news will most likely add to the anxiety of consumers and workers already concerned that the mortgage crisis could plunge the economy into a recession. Adding to worries, the government reported that retail sales in December declined for the first time since 2002.

Growing pessimism led to another sharp sell-off in stocks, which fell about 2 percent for the day and are now down about 6 percent since the beginning of 2008, the third worst start for a year since 1926...

Meanwhile, let's go look at what Those Who Would Lead say about the best way to shovel out of the Big Shitpile... not that Democrats in the state of Michigan have any voice in the process. Not that the Rethuglicans are even willing to use the R-word:



Sleepy Fred thinks he's still walking down the sunny side of the street. Hucksterbee wants to know where in the Bible the Recession is ever mentioned. Or the Constitution, either. 9ui11ani wants to use the Department of Homeland Security to make you remember any Economic problems can be solved by cutting taxes just like he did on 9-11. And so on, ad nauseum.

Unit Prime of the Oborg is making noises like the Assimilated do: "...cut $80 billion in taxes"...

Not so strangely enough, Hillary gets this right as Edwards does. When you're caught between a hyperinflationary energy cost increase pressure and the deflationary vacuum of an overpriced real estate-financial market, you keep people working and earning a paycheck. You do things like make sure they can stay healthy and keep working. You let them all go unemployed, and you don't just have a Recession.

You have a Depression. The Christian Dominionists feel that another great Depression is just what's needed to set up their kind of Moral society, to keep their wimmin at home, barefoot and pregnant, their kids God fearin' and in line, and the darkies pickin' in the field. But anybody sane realizes that after the Dominionists have their Apocalypse, the only languages anyone will be speaking will be Hindi and Chinese, and the Warrior Christ will have about the following that the other religons lost in blood, time, and dust have.