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To: MoneyPenny who wrote (99204)	1/7/2008 7:39:02 AM
From: Giordano Bruno	Respond to of 306849

Taking Into Account The Caution Factor January 7, 2008 7:11 a.m. The Morning Brief, a look at the day's biggest news, is emailed to subscribers by 7 a.m. every business day. Sign up for the e-mail here. These are nervous times in Corporate America, and when corporate leaders get nervous, they get cautious. When they get cautious, they don't hire. It is no surprise then that even as the Bush administration tries to plot a course toward economic stimulus, President Bush himself -- who addresses the subject again today -- is keeping his rhetoric positive, especially in comparison to counterparts overseas. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, for example, warned yesterday that Britain's economy faces a "dangerous" year ahead, as the Financial Times reports. In contrast, Mr. Bush on Friday told a White House working group on financial markets that "this economy of ours is on a solid foundation," even if "we can't take economic growth for granted." Still, Mr. Bush noted that gas and food prices are rising, home values are falling, and -- most conspicuously in Friday's payroll-employment report -- job growth has slowed. He offered no fresh proposals yet, warning against tax increases and reiterating his call for refinery expansion and more domestic exploration for oil and gas, but he promised to work with Congress "to deal with the economic realities of the moment." House and Senate Democrats are already preparing legislation aimed at stimulating economic growth but, like the White House, face what The Wall Street Journal describes as a difficult choice. "Should they craft narrow remedies to improve the housing sector alone? Or, as some prominent economists have suggested, should they come up with broader measures to try to lift consumer spending and business investment?" the Journal asks. In addition to looking at the economic fundamentals, both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue will have to figure out "what can be achieved or lost in an election year," the paper adds. Possibilities include temporary reductions in payroll taxes for individuals and ways of encouraging investment in businesses. Whatever they do, the most crucial task might be reassurance -- not just of investors at a time when stock markets are trending downward, or of banks at a time when the credit crunch has lenders more skittish about parting with their cash. (The latter has been one of the Federal Reserve's most pressing concerns in recent months.) Rather, the government might want to focus on restoring the confidence of executives and boards who decide whether to hire workers and pay them in ways that will translate into consumer spending -- the key fuel of the U.S. economy. Friday's report from the Labor Department was bleak: a December unemployment rate that shot up to 5% from 4.7% a month earlier; the loss of 80,000 jobs from manufacturing and construction payrolls, even as a rise in service-industry jobs managed to boost overall nonfarm U.S. payrolls by a meager 18,000; and a disquieting year-to-year comparison of the labor force. The employment-population ratio -- the share of the U.S. population considered employed -- has generally been declining since December of 2006 and last month was at 62.7%, down 0.7 percentage points from a year earlier. The number of discouraged workers -- those defined by the government as people no longer looking for work because they don't think jobs are available -- was at 363,000, up from 274,000 in December 2006. This number tends to jump around a lot from season to season but can be a telling one over time. And the number of people working part time for economic reasons shot up over the year, with the tally of this category blaming slack work or business conditions rising to 3.2 million from 2.8 million. As the Journal reports, employers have been cutting the work load of many employees to below the 35-hour-per-week threshold of "full time" because of slowing demand, in order to retain a skilled work force in the face of housing- and car-market slowdowns that reverberate elsewhere. (The Journal also blames Japan's lack of a true rebound five years after its economy started expanding again on "companies' growing reliance on temporary workers, who earn less -- and spend less -- than full-time employees.") About four and a half years ago, amid the last big hiring slowdown in the U.S., former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan suggested it might in part be due to a "a pervasive sense of caution" in boardrooms bred by the many corporate-governance scandals then in the headlines. The subprime-mortgage mess is in some ways a scandal of more limited proportion, but it resounds louder and farther afield than Enron or WorldCom or Tyco. It comes amid the uncertainty of a presidential race, and with the likes of Pakistan and other global hotspots keeping global tensions high. So as Mr. Bush and Congress try to figure out their economic strategies, one important goal may be to comfort. online.wsj.com

To: MoneyPenny who wrote (99204)	1/7/2008 12:23:51 PM
From: John Vosilla	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

All would be a HUGE improvement over GWB. We need inspiration, brains and honesty. It sure helps not to get tongue tied attempting to answer a question that catches you off guard. Though most besides Paul don't appear to grasp what is really going on besides the war, taxes, health care I do believe America will be a better place after the next term is over.. Romney and Clinton might be the smartest folks in the room but they are losing for now to the inspirational characters..