A bad news day at Bloomberg

This is what was on Bloomberg video yesterday evening - the bad news outweighed the good news by a wide margin and no one even mentioned the stock market plunge.


Here are the links (view them at your own risk):

1. HUD Secretary Jackson on "pretty bad" subprime loans
2. Bernanke on inflation anchors (speech and Q&A)
   
3. Grassly on Paulson pussyfooting
4. McCulley on weak consumer spending (with Diane Swonk!)
   
5. Pontikus on the diving dollar
6. Warrack on downgrading $12B of subprime debt

Caroline Baum is back at work too - she reports on the "phantom jobs" being created by the birth/death model at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As the economy has slowed in the past year, the relative contribution of the birth/death adjustment to unadjusted payroll growth has increased to 56 percent (for the 12 months ended June) from 31 percent (12 months ended March 2006), according to Kasriel.

It's curious that the contribution "has been trending higher as the percentage of small businesses saying now is a good time to expand has been trending lower,'' he says.

Only 13 percent of small businesses surveyed by the National Federation of Independent Businesses said it was a good time to expand operations in June.

"If existing small businesses don't think it's a good time to expand their operations, does it make sense that there are a lot of new small businesses starting up and hiring?'' Kasriel wonders.

Here's the chart that goes along with those words from Northern Trust's Paul Kasriel in Monday's global commentary(.pdf).