Shambles

Update: From the National Journal's Congressional Insiders' Poll of 40 Democrats (by Richard E. Cohen and Peter Bell): "Roughly how much longer do you expect the recession to continue?"

6 months or less - 3 percent
7 to 12 months - 15 percent
13 to 23 months - 63 percent
24 months or longer - 20 percent
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The results of Bush's industrial policy, wars and crony capitalism, are plain to see in this morning's news.

"The United States economy shrank at its fastest pace in a quarter century from October through December, the government reported on Friday, in the broadest accounting yet of the toll of the credit crisis. Consumer spending and business investment all but disappeared, and economists said the painful contraction was likely to continue at an alarming pace well into the summer," reads the lede in the New York Times.

Other economists are much more pessimistic, and those shorting the Dow and watching for the moment when it drops below 6,000 are making the best out of what author Dave Lindorff explains is an economy that will not endure:

Over the last 20 years, America has degenerated into a nation of consumers, with 72 percent of Gross Domestic Product (sic) now being accounted for by consumer spending--most of it going for things that are produced overseas and shipped here.

That is not an economic model that is sustainable, and it is a model that has just suffered what is certainly a mortal blow.

Bottom line: Nothing Obama proposes is too much in his stimulus package to clean up this mess. And Republicans complaining about any spending on any earmark resemble someone yelling about a piece of litter left in the yard as a tornado approaches.