You know the economy is wobbling when even Microsoft is laying off. Microsoft announced today that it will lay off up to 5,000 of its 94,000 employees over the next 18 months, including 1,400 people today. These are the first large layoffs in company history.
The soap opera of the New York Senate seat selection took a unexpected turn when Caroline Kennedy announced in a statement early this morning that, for personal reasons, she was withdrawing her name from consideration. This after she spent weeks lobbying for the job. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo may now be the front-runner to replace Hillary Clinton.
With all the hope created by the Obama presidency, it is out of fashion to be cynical. But Jim Vandehei and John Harris of Politico offered reasons to be skeptical about Obama’s chances, including:
– Some of Washington’s biggest blunders occur when the government moves to do big things with big support. Bush won the much-regretted Iraq war resolution of October 2002 with strong Democratic backing. The current economic crisis produces similar pressure to get on board the train – never mind for sure where it’s going.
– No matter how much confidence Obama or other politicians project, the reality is the current economic crisis has totally scrambled the intellectual assumptions of almost every policymaker. Improvisation is the only proper response. But the chances that improvisation will take the country to exactly the right destination – without some serious wrong turns along the way – seem very slight.
The Obama administration is wisely being cautious in deciding how to shore up the nation’s faltering financial system, which is suffering from a new wave of losses. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman raised concerns about one proposal that is gaining currency with some policymakers: Create a government-owned “aggregator bank” that would buy up bad bank assets at fair value. Krugman questioned what “fair value” would mean and said the policy could amount to making huge gifts to bank shareholders at taxpayer expense. “I suspect that taxpayers are about to get another raw deal,” he wrote, “and that we’re about to get another financial rescue plan that fails to do the job.”
“I thought Obama gave a great speech. But I think he may have promised too much, like when he promised to bring the dog from the ‘Marley & Me’ movie back to life. That seemed over the top to me.” – Jay Leno
“Officials at the White House say that President Bush completed his last piece of official business in the Oval Office at 6 a.m. (Tuesday) morning. Yep. Bush says it should take Obama weeks to find where he hid the dead fish.” – Conan O’Brien
“They estimate that around 2 million people crowded in to the National Mall to see Obama’s swearing-in ceremony, which is the first time a mall has been crowded in about a year.” – Jimmy Kimmel
You know the economy is wobbling when even Microsoft is laying off. Microsoft announced today that it will lay off up to 5,000 of its 94,000 employees over the next 18 months, including 1,400 people today. These are the first large layoffs in company history.
