Michael B. Duff

On the day that the Great Recession was officially declared to be part of history, President Obama confronted deepening angst from business leaders and ordinary Americans who have little faith that the recovery is for real.

So what they are recording as a profit this year, is just a time lag between their revenue moving up and their costs moving up. Revenues always move up faster than costs because of the time lag between selling and restocking. (Costs relative to revenues—i.e. being matched to those revenues in accounting terms—are incurred at an earlier period when the amount of money in circulation is significantly less, so the prices that comprise those costs are less.)

Notice how little this has to do with the law and violations thereof, and how much it has to do with submission to authority.

While I don't begrudge Sullivan or anyone else adapting their political and economic views to changing circumstances (or even just for the hell of it), I'd find the arguments a lot more persuasive if he (and they) dropped the pretense that it's only their opponents who are being ideological in any given debate. Do-something mentality, "pragmatism," and deference to power can all be just as ideological as libertarianism, even if they don't have their own seven-syllable descriptors and bad taste in prog-rock. More pressing to the matter at hand, they can be wrong, and they usually hold the power. It's gonna take more than the absence of bread lines to make me believe this particular P.R. campaign.

Today's action shows just how hard the market is trying to breach the upside resistance and disprove all the economic fundamentals that unequivocally point to an ongoing and accelerating deterioration in the economy. Below are the key charts supporting Bartels' call.

Awesome gold conspiracy theory.