"Tossed on a Sea of Troubles, Soul, My Soul"
Atrios has an understatedly funny post about Friday's market action, Libby's indictment, and media coverage. Paging Dr. Shiller: you'd love this one.
Before we cut to the chase of what happened while we were distracted by rock and roll, and the continued denouement of Team Bush lies in service of Team Bush Disasters, we'll just note that there's something they never warned you about in coffee-house blogging school: the counterperson might be playing a CD by the ineffably twee Belle and Sebastian. Gacky poo.
Okay, big number: GDP growth for the third quarter of 2005 surprised on the upside, coming in at 3.8% annualized. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know. Well, not really. Bloomberg adds these helpful notes:
"Growth in the U.S. has exceeded 3 percent for 10 straight quarters, the longest string since the 13 three-month periods that ended in March 1986 and the best performance in the Group of Seven industrialized nations, which includes the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Canada and Italy.
The U.S. economy grew 3.6 percent in the 12 months ended in September. By comparison, only the economies of Japan and Canada exceeded 2 percent growth during the 12 months ended in June, according to the latest available data.
. . .
The government's personal consumption expenditures index, a measure of prices tied to consumer spending, rose 3.7 percent after a 3.3 percent gain in the second quarter. The index excluding food and energy, a measure favored by Fed policy makers, rose at a 1.3 percent annual rate, the slowest since a 1 percent pace in the second quarter of 2003."
More junk to keep outside of your brainpan: The Fed will raise them gol-darned short-term rates to 4.00% next week. The 10-year Treasury Note stands at 4.57%, and the S&P 500 stands at 1198. Jeremy Siegel thinks this means stocks are undervalued, or so he said in a note to subscribers today. Well, he's the Prof.
But I continue to be dismayed by the Prof's seeming insistence that preserving the dividend tax cut is the end-all of good government, and the lynchpin of good economic policy. Siegel seems to want a popular Bush administration so that these tax cuts can stay in place.
Perhaps good policies, fiscal and otherwise, would have led to a popular Bush administration.
As it is, Bush is a weak, worried little manny man. He is weaker than a squished worm on a drying sidewalk. May we be rid of his disastrous administration quickly.
And as I sign off, the counterperson is playing a live version of the Clash's "Complete Control". That's more like it.