How long the "patch" will last? Who knows. History of the 1982 recession... lesson ...inflation with interest slash only postpones recessions.

jim, you are clearly ignorant of certain economic fundamentals:

• "homeownership at record levels": forclosures, especially in the sub-prime market, are also at record levels. this is the market that fed that record level of home ownership.

• "unemployment is near 5%": the count fails to include those still unemployed after 18 months, so that % is itself a fiction. being employed, at $10 an hour, with no benefits, is probably worse than being unemployed.

• "interest rates are low": because the fed, in a desperate effort to feed a recession, has been dropping the discount rate for two years now. it hasn't worked. credit card & revolving charge rates are at historic highs.

• "the stock market, even at 11,600 is near a record high...": fair enough. however, if your 401(k) (invested in those stocks suffering a huge drop in mv) lost 20% of its value overnight, this probably comes as small comfort to you.

At one point, the announcer makes a remark about "how much of your retirement do you have in stock?" and, at another, about the old joke "Wanna buy some stock?" (the same one I remember cracking, feeling smug for having chosen law school a few weeks before one of the big '80s crashes) regaining currency.

Then, there's a brief backgrounder-type piece, about bubbles and crashes throughout history.  They recapitualate the history of the Dutch Tulip Bulb craze, skip the South Seas bubble (not relevant to their history), talk about the panic of 1873 (relevant to their history) and then about 1929.  They rehearse the statements of economists prior to the 1929 crash, about how the market has reached a new high plateau and is not expected to decline, ever, from there.  And then they talk about the sequelae of the 1929 crash.

They conclude the commentary by noting that responsible experts do not see any bottom, soon (or otherwise).

newly published global oil supply report to be presented by the Energy Watch Group at the Foreign Press Association in London, world oil production peaked in 2006. Production will start to decline at a rate of several percent per year. By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.

"The most alarming finding is the steep decline of the oil supply after peak", warns Jörg Schindler from the Energy Watch Group. This result, together with the timing of the peak, is obviously in sharp contrast to the projections by the International Energy Agency (IEA). "Since crude oil is the most important energy carrier at a global scale and since all kinds of transport rely heavily on oil, the future oil availability is of paramount importance as it entails completely different actions by politics, business and individuals.", says Schindler.

This cautious energy outlook corresponds with statements made by former US Defense Secretary and CIA Director, James Schlesinger, who said at a recent oil summit in Cork: "The battle is over, the oil peakists have won. Current US energy policy and the administration's oil strategy in Iraq and Iran are deluded."
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"The oil boom is over and will not return. All of us must get used to a different lifestyle.", said King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the largest global oil producer. For quite some time, a hot debate has been going on regarding peak oil. Institutions close to the energy industry, like CERA, are engaging in a campaign trying to debunk peak oil as a "theory". However, the EWG report shows that peak oil is real. The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by a sharp decline of fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of daily life.
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"My experience of debating the peak oil issue with the oil industry, and trying to alert Whitehall to it, is that there is a culture of institutionalised denial in government and the energy industry. As the evidence of an early peak in production unfolds, this becomes increasingly impossible to understand", says Jeremy Leggett, the Solarcentury CEO and former member of the British Government's Renewables Advisory Board.

encouraged the development of the subprime debacle through legislation like [Clinton's] Community Reinvestment Act, which they say forces banks to lend to otherwise uncreditworthy consumers.[39] Economist Robert Kuttner has criticized [Clinton's] repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as contributing to the subprime meltdown.