As in most great historical transformations, the members of the highly educated upper-middle class will express their suffering most loudly. It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most. First they lose the subjects they’ve only been pretending to understand — chaos theory, monetary policy, Don Delillo — and pretty soon their conversation is reduced to the core stories of self-heroism.
Ayn Rand could not write her way out of a paper bag.
Wine bar?
Wine Bar Trap
Protests may spread as falling supplies caused by crop failures and greater use of grains for biofuels stoke inflation globally, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said today. The World Bank says 33 countries from Mexico to Yemen may face social unrest because of surging food prices.
“We have seen riots around the world, and there’s risk that these will spread because of rising prices in countries where 50 percent to 60 percent of incomes go to foods,” FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said in New Delhi today. “The problem is serious.”
“Cracking down on those who “abused the bankruptcy laws,” President Bush said, would therefore “make credit more affordable.” And we’d all be better off.
“The law did slash the number of bankruptcies—they fell by sixty-two per cent between 2004 and 2006.”
“Interest rates and credit-card fees have not fallen as promised.”
“And for debtors life has become significantly harder: many can’t afford bankruptcy—strangely enough, it’s possible to be too poor to pay the filing fees—and many others can’t qualify.”
Bloomberg Survey
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Release Period Prior Median
Indicator Date Value Forecast
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Chicago PM Index 3/31 March 44.5 46.0
ISM Manu Index 4/1 March 48.3 47.5
ISM Prices Index 4/1 March 75.5 75.0
Construct Spending MOM% 4/1 Feb. -1.7% -1.0%
Factory Orders MOM% 4/2 Jan. -2.5% -0.8%
Initial Claims ,000’s 4/3 30-Mar 366 366
Cont. Claims ,000’s 4/3 23-Mar 2845 2848
ISM NonManu Index 4/3 March 49.3 48.5
Nonfarm Payrolls ,000’s 4/4 March -63 -50
Unemploy Rate % 4/4 March 4.8% 5.0%
Manu Payrolls ,000’s 4/4 March -52 -40
Hourly Earnings MOM% 4/4 March 0.3% 0.3%
Hourly Earnings YOY% 4/4 March 3.7% 3.6%
Avg Weekly Hours 4/4 March 33.7 33.7
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“He has taken extraordinary measures, things that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. He’s working overtime, literally and figuratively, to get this panic under control. But so far, it’s not under control.”
—Former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder, a Princeton University professor.
The goal is to “help restart the housing engine that powers our economy,” Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Daniel Mudd said at a news conference in Washington today. Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron added: “This is what the GSEs were put in place for, to deal with situations like this and we will deliver.”
“Even though he’s the Fed chairman, he’s going to get hit — but I think lot of people will in Washington”
—William Wheaton, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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