Good Morning, everyone.  We have finally finished the really big portions of the spring cleaning--the parts where we had to move furniture (heavy, bulky furniture) and wash walls.  I think I mentioned before that we don't like cleaning and generally wait until the 'spirit' moves us--like when we can write our names in the dust on the shelves.  That should give you an idea of how long it has been since we last did this kind of cleaning.  We keep saying that we should do this at least once a year, but.....

Tripping through the blogosphere this morning I found this little item by Dean Baker at TPM Cafe.  I have noticed that much of the discussion (shouting?) has a fantastic (read: fantasy) quality about it.  I have seen wild swings of mood among the commentators from deeply to pessimistic to wildly enthusiastic.  I wonder if our pundits and reporters need some Prozac as they seem rather manic-depressive.  Worse, I don't see any intelligent discussion about what is happening, as they say, on Main Street.  Example: looking at the job listings for the town I live in for the month of march how many jobs would you guess I have seen?  To date--ten.  I counted them.  Another example:  one of the lead stories on the Chicago evening news last night was the response to a new hotel hiring to open in May.  An obscene number of people applied for, maybe, if I remember correctly, 300 jobs.  And that was only the number who actually got in to interview.  Many were left out when the organizers of the 'job fair' closed the door mid-day and never got to interview at all.  Yet some of the talking heads on CNBC were extolling the fact that the numbers of newly unemployed for March, so far, was about 30k less than in February which was a little less than January.  They are hoping that that means the unemployment has bottomed.  I say 'WTF!!, you idiots.  That is still almost 2 million people who have lost their jobs in the last 3 months.'  This is a case of a silver lining with a very big dark cloud which our supposed experts are trying to ignore in their search for hopeful signs.

Chris In Paris (at Americablog) posted this today.  I also wonder how many more divisions of AIG are going to need money.  I have thought from the beginning that the whole thing should have been dismantled in an orderly manner.  I simply don't buy the argument about 'too big to fail.'  We haven't really avoided the pain of this economic disaster--we have just prolonged it.