Obama confident yet impatient

After a spate of discouraging economic reports, President Barack Obama insisted Tuesday he's not afraid of the country slipping into a double-dip recession. But at the same time he displayed some impatience that the pace of the recovery has "got to accelerate."
MSNBC.com
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Well, I'm dancing as fast I can, Mr. Prez!
Anyway why would he be 'afraid'? He won't lose HIS job, until, maybe November 2012...

Unemployment down to 9%!!! [BS]

One website parroted the mainstream media's "good news" nonsense, then added:
In fact, the unemployment situation in the US – and in the West generally – remains disastrous. Alternative ‘Net news organizations estimate US unemployment to be in the area of 20 percent; and we believe it is likely much higher than that. Even some mainstream media voices cannot keep up the pretense that the economy is turning positive again.

This just in...

NEW YORK — The U.S. economy is headed for a new recession, said John Taylor, chairman and chief investment officer of FX Concepts, and that will likely benefit the dollar and weigh on commodity prices.
"It's a new recession. We're already growing, but the numbers show that the U.S. government is still the primary creator of this growth," said Taylor, who runs the world's largest currency hedge fund with assets under management of around $8.5 billion.
"I would argue that by the middle of next year, we will be in a recession and our fiscal hands will be tied."Banks in a recession tend to demand the repayment of loans, and if the debt is denominated in the U.S. currency -- and in most cases they are -- then investors are squeezed as they scramble to find dollars to repay the debt.
This was what happened in late 2008 when the safe-haven dollar strengthened against most major currencies.
"It's kind of perverse. When the U.S. economy is doing badly, the dollar goes up and when the economy is doing well, the dollar goes down."
For now, all eyes are on the euro zone, which is facing a debt crisis. Theoretically, at some point the euro could fall apart, Taylor said,
"What Europe has done is not enough. They have to have eurobonds," said Taylor. "You can't lend money to Ireland or Greece. You're just piling on more debt to them, and it's getting harder and harder to repay."
Taylor said Portugal could be the next country to seek a bailout after Ireland, with Spain after that. This will push the euro to parity versus the dollar by next year, he forecast. In early New York trading, the euro was down 1 percent at $1.3277.
He recommends selling the euro against the Swiss franc, a currency whose economy has fared better than most European countries.
The FX Concepts chief is also bearish on commodities, predicting that this asset class will slow down next year as the U.S. economy goes into recession. That should be negative for commodity-linked currencies such as the Australian and Canadian dollars.

POSTER NOTE: This didn't happen, yet...2011 was another year of slow death.

STOCKS RALLY on increased jobless claims!

Yep, because the Fed said they can fix this. Horsedovers!! They have NO CLUE!
Buried in an MSNBC article largely upbeat:
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The economy's recovery from the longest and deepest downturn since the 1930s has suffered a setback, leaving unemployment uncomfortably high. The economy grew at a sluggish 2.0 percent annual pace in the third quarter, a touch faster than the 1.7 percent rate in the second quarter, but way below potential.
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The fatcats on Wall Street can just "setback" and keep sucking in the money...

Blame It on BO? Nope.

New jobless claims stuck at 450,000 level. Unemployment "9.6%", but actual out of work is 22%. GOP-huggers are blaming HealthCare Reform for creating business "uncertainty". But the REAL culprits are:
1. CHINA for playing games with yuan valuation to cheat on international (oil) trade;
2. FAT CATS who are profiting from the "recovery" (read "10+ year continuing economic malaise") by manipulating corporate direction toward their own enrichment.
3. COWARDLY POLITICIANS who do everything they can to stay in power, regardless of whether the city / state /country benefits!
To deal with the first and second, we need a stronger Federal resolve; to handle the last, we
need to reform our Republic! Professional politicians are the bane of good government.
BTW I had a thought that it's good that group #2 is cannibalistic.

Oil vs Recession (Sept 2010)

Oil has mostly traded in the mid-$70s this summer as investors struggle to gauge how much global economic growth may slow in the second half and how much that will affect crude demand. Most analysts expect the U.S. economy won't slip back into recession.
"The bottomline is that there is no easy excuse for the slowdown in the recovery," the Schork Group said. "On the other hand, we are far from a double dip recession. Growth in key industries will boost the economy slowly, but sustainably."

Oh yeah???

AVG FALSE ALARM: WASTED TIME chasing a "virus"

Yesterday I and about 110 million other people started getting virus detections from AVG antivirus of Framer/HTML javascript exploit in BrowserCompAp(i). I assumed it was from some game my daughter downloaded. I spent two hours chasing a fix last night, and then an hour this morning. Finally found post on AVG Facebook page explaining they were "resolving" the issue with a new update....???!!!
THEY WERE MIS-DETECTING A MALFORM IN ZYNGA (& other ) TOOLBAR APIs!
Just like the McAfee blunder in February! Except no software damaged, just MILLIONS OF HOURS of wasted time by people all over the planet!