GolfHos

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a15rVo2g2WoE&refer=home

Make that about -8% in reality.

OK...and I'm just asking because I'm curious

what number would make you happy?

-8%, -16%....-32%

an outbreak of worldwide famine, pestulance and internecine conflict on a scale heretofore not seen since biblical times?

I mean, what will it take for you to stop and say, smugly, "Yeah, that sounds about right..that's about as bad as I actually figure it is based upon my own calculations."

Whatever the # is that is adjusted by real inflation.  I'm estimating off a curve fit to the M3 before they quit tracking it.  That's certainly not 100% accurate, but it's a hell of a lot closer than just pumping in the standard 3% or so they do.

What would make me happy is for everybody to get behind this administration's plan instead of clinging to their tired, failed ideologies. Perhaps depression-like numbers are the cold, hard facts that will make this happen.

Not exactly what I was trying to get at.  I understand the fun with numbers thing--I exist in a world where data is massaged to read prettier than it is, and you don't survive without mastering that.

I'm trying to get at aske's sense of how low things would have to go before he is finally satisfied, where the gloom of reality meets his gloomy preconceptions.

I think it is somewhere between -31% GDP and the apocalypse.

And who gives a *fudge* if the conservatives don't get on board or if they keep on bloviating with their tired, vapid ideology?  The last two election cycles proved their irrelevancy like a jab to the gut followed by a roundhouse hook, and they seem to be the only ones who don't understand that.

btw, they are not just *fudge*ed, but totally *fudge*ed.  Obama is looking to get 60 dems in the Senate by picking one of them off...Sen Judd Gregg (R-NH) may be named as Commerce Secretary (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/us/politics/30gregg.html?_r=1&ref=us), giving the Democrats a fillibuster-proof majority.  Not a bad little move considering he's just a house Negro.

No, they need to cling to their failed ideology and follow their failed ideologues into the mists of history.

Republican = Whig.