Some headlines today:
#1: Jittery Shoppers Dim Stores’ Hopes “Americans show little sign of regaining the confidence that once made them world-champion shoppers, and that caution has retailers leery about the prospects for the economy in 2010.”
#2: Nearly 25% of all mortgages are underwater “First American CoreLogic, the research firm that monitors housing equity, reported Tuesday that 11.3 million homeowners — or 24% of all homes with mortgages — were underwater as of the end of 2009.”
#3: Number of US ‘problem’ banks soars “No longer confined to Wall Street, the financial crisis has cascaded over to regional and community banks that are feeling a disproportionate amount of the pain. ‘The great recession has very much become a Main Street problem,’ said Richard Brown, the FDIC’s chief economist.”
#4: Lending Falls at Epic Pace “U.S. banks posted last year their sharpest decline in lending since 1942, suggesting that the industry’s continued slide is making it harder for the economy to recover.”
And then there’s this one, about Republican Scott Brown’s vote to support a tax cut that would help employers increase hiring:
#5 GOP’s Brown branded turncoat for vote on jobs bill “Literally overnight, the fledgling Republican senator who ended Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority by winning a special election in Massachusetts has gone from being the darling of America’s conservative activists to being their goat….The conservative Drudge Report colored a photo of Brown on its home page in scarlet. Cries of ‘let down,’ ‘betrayal,’ ‘sell out,’ and ‘RINO’ — Republican In Name Only — flew around Twitter. By Tuesday afternoon, more than 4,200 people had left comments on Brown’s Facebook page, the majority of which were harshly negative.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the modern Republican Party. In the midst of the deepest, sharpest economic slowdown since the Great Depression, only five of 41 GOP senators were willing to vote for a modest jobs bill based entirely on tax cuts. One of those five, a conservative hero a mere four weeks ago, is practically excommunicated from the movement for voting in favor of the bill. A bill, to repeat, based entirely on tax cuts that would spur hiring. What’s left to say?
