Retail Sales

Retail sales in November increased 1.2%. That was twice the gain expected by economists. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of all economic activity.

Club Fed

On Tuesday the Fed cut rates yet again.

I sat down that day and dutifully wrote an annual summary of the Fed's actions, trying not to be too harsh but also trying to be realistic. I presumed, of course, the Fed was done for the year.

Nope.

On Wednesday the Fed went from acting strangely and arguably recklessly to outright chugging from the Kool-Aid.

The Fed set up the strawman fiction of live auctions at which banks can bid for billions of dollars of public money.

Oh, brother.

That's not all.

The Fed also set up a line of credit to the EUropean Central Bank and to the Bank of Switzerland.

What's next?

Bernanke will ride around on a Segway throwing stacks of hundred dollar bills to each homeowner he sees???

I mean, seriously, this is getting absurd. We don't need all of that liquidity. We're not in a credit crisis. For Pete's sake there are private wholesale lenders out there giving 90-plus percent financing to people with barely-above-average credit scores on jumbo loans (that means > than $417,000) with fully-amortized fixed rates under 7% and no up-front points. And I know that for a fact because I've been depositing commission checks for brokering those f'n loans. If that's a credit crisis we probably should think real hard about what a *real* credit crisis would look like. Sheesh.

Memo to Ben Bernanke and to other members of the FOMC:

Turn off CNBC.
Take a chill pill.
Relax.

Deaf, Dumb and Blind

I got a kick out of this article (which, keep in mind, has its own underlying and liberal agenda):

Climate Change Skeptics Say Debate Stifled

The head of the U.N. panel on climate change compared him to Hitler. Another leading scientist called him a parasite. A third described his latest book as a 'stealth attack' on mankind.

This list of allegations against Bjoern Lomborg, one of the world's leading climate change skeptics, almost reads like an indictment for war crimes.

Ah, yes.

But as any long-term observer can tell you the phenomenon of liberal academics demonizing and degrading their opponents is as common and as long-standing as high relative rates of poverty, crime, school dropouts, unemployment, murder and teen pregancies, in big liberal cities controlled for decades by liberal Democrats.

That's just how they roll, baby.