Many Americans Do Not Know Mr. Romney’s Religion, Mr. Obama Talks, But Is Anyone Listening Anymore, The Blackberry Turns Sour

And Interesting Things in Political  and Economic News



Mr. Romney is What?



Poll results reported by USA Today show that a large number of American simply do not know what religion Mitt Romney is affiliated with.  This is a rare bit of good news in an otherwise vicious and mean and ugly political season.

President Obama has made another speech about the budget deficit and raising the debt ceiling, yada, yada, yada.  Although no poll has been released, The Dismal Political Economist thinks that if asked, 98% of American would say they longer care what Mr. Obama says, and the other 2% would say they did not understand the question.

Because of budget dispute the FAA non-essential operations have stopped, and airlines are no longer collecting some air ticket taxes.  The airlines are, however, raising their prices so that the taxes that would have been paid to the government is going to the airlines.  Wow, who could have seen that coming?

Moody’s, the company that gives quality rating to debt has cut the ratings on Greek bonds again, and again and again.  The new rating is “Ca”, which in layman’s terms means “this is the stuff you line the birdcage with”.



Shares in RIM, lead by joint chairmen
 and chief executives Mike Lazaridis (above)
 and Jim Balsillie, have lost more
 than half their value in the past six months



Remember when the Blackberry was the latest thing in electronics.  Well the company that makes the Blackberry, RIM is not doing very well and will cut 2,000 positions.  The Company will also look at restructuring its senior management.  The Dismal Political Economist thinks maybe they should look at their product line instead.

Economic Growth figures for Britain for the 2^nd quarter was  released this week and nobody was expecting anything great.Their expectations were met, .2% quarterly growth.   Also, for June business lending contracted, so future numbers are not expected to have a large improvement.  Consumer credit also contracted.  All of this comes as a surprise to everyone except those who recognized that policy to reduce growth in the economy is likely to produce lower growth. 

The Conservative government accepted no blame for the British economy, George Osborne, chancellor, on Monday defended the deep spending cuts his government has made, blaming overseas problems for making the recovery more difficult.  Yep, those “overseas problems” sure can kill an economy.

The idea of a new Deficit Commission that would produce recommendations for budget cuts is being floated by Republicans.  Gee, where have we heard that before.  See that last time Republicans proposed a Congressionally appointed Debt Commission Mr. Obama accepted the idea.  Once Mr. Obama was on board, the seven Republican Senators who not only supported the idea for co-sponsored the legislation withdrew their support.

As noted by a Politico story on Jan. 26, 2010, "The tepid support from Democratic leaders contributed to the loss, but more decisive was the number of Republicans switching under pressure from their party to block the measure." Days before the vote, seven Republicans who had supported the measure withdrew their co-sponsorship and eventually voted against it

The Dismal Political Economist is somewhat amazed at how dumb the Republicans think the American people are, and constantly amazed at how often they are right.