I'd like Bleak and Captain Capitalism to meet each other. Both commenting on the unemployment report from Friday (my comments here):

Is Ben Bernanke going to end up becoming this generation's Arthur Burns? (bleak)

how much you want to bet they'll blame Bush and Republicans for the recession we'll be in, even though it's the sub prime deadbeats and the corrupt mortgage lenders/bankers that are truly to blame? (CC)

Hold the phone, guys. I'm not convinced we're even in a recession. Ironman uses interest rate spreads to show that the worse is over, and that it's only 50-50 we even have had one. I'm wondering how likely it is we have a recession underway when we have yet to have a single quarter of negative GDP growth, and barely a 50-50 chance of one in this quarter. The first big numbers for May -- retail sales -- comes out Thursday. We'll see.

Labels: economics