All the news is bad today

MANIFESTO

Even one of the country's wealthiest states is suffering:

A record number of businesses have shut down in the first three months of the year, demonstrating that the national economic slowdown is having an impact in Connecticut, the Secretary of the State said Wednesday.

Nearly 2,800 businesses have closed between January and March, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said. She said it's the highest number of business closings for a first quarter since at least 2000.

The number of business openings in the January-March period, nearly 7,800, also is the fewest in five years.

Meanwhile, the toady Bernanke is finally thinking about calling a spade a spade.

For the first time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged the U.S. could reel into recession from the powerful punches of housing, credit and financial crises ...

With home foreclosures swelling to record highs and job losses mounting, Bernanke on Wednesday offered Congress an unflinching - and more pessimistic - assessment of potential damage to the national economy.

"A recession is possible," said Bernanke, who is under immense political and public pressure to turn things around. "Our estimates are that we're slightly growing at the moment, but we think that there's a chance that for the first half as a whole there might be a slight contraction."

Under one rule of thumb, six straight months of a shrinking economy would constitute a recession, but Bernanke wasn't getting into that. "A recession is a technical term," he said. "I'm not yet ready to say whether or not the U.S. economy will face such a situation."

Of course he's not ready because he doesn't have a clue what he's doing.

"[H]e didn't offer a clear signal about the Fed's interest-rate intentions from here on ...

"The Fed has pulled out all the stops to rescue both financial markets and the economy and now is probably hoping for the best," said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Bank of America's Investment Strategies Group.

Too typical. So now, on both the economic and Middle East fronts, the Bushies are "hoping for the best." For years, those who have brains in their heads have been pointing out that "hope is not a plan," but these morons have nothing else up their sleeves.

It's a hell of a way to govern a country.

(And I won't even talk about the unbelievable Yoo memo.)