By Barry Ritholtz

Dear Uncle Sucker,

I was about to send you a thank you note for bailing out the economy . . . but then some nice men dressed in Ninja outfits came in and shot me full of truth serum. That led me to make one more set of edits to my letter thanking you for saving the economy.

It also helped me recall some things I seemed to have forgotten in my other public pronunciations about the bailouts.

I suddenly recalled who it was who allowed the banks to run wild in the first place: You. Your behavior before, during and after the crisis was the epitome of a corrupt and irresponsible government. You rewarded incompetency, created moral hazard, punished the prudent, and engaged in the single biggest transfer of wealth from the citizenry of the United States to the Wall Street insiders who created the mess in the first place.

Kudos.

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By Anthony Gregory

It’s all over the news. “The recession is over.” The mainstream economists say so. This was the longest recession since World War II, I heard on the news (say, I thought the economy was just dandy throughout that war — oh, never mind).

The end of this terrible recession into which the free market plunged us is all thanks to the federal government, of course. In particular, we owe the Obama administration our gratitude for its stimulus program. But we should also tip our hats — hats we can presumably now afford to buy — toward the Bush administration for its TARP bailouts, without which the banking system would have completely collapsed, credit would have dried up and we would have all starved to death.

This is another wonderful crisis brought to an end by government.

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By Matthew Brown

Investors will face defaults on government bonds given the burden of aging populations and the difficulty of securing more tax revenue, according to Morgan Stanley.

“Governments will impose a loss on some of their stakeholders,” Arnaud Mares, an executive director at Morgan Stanley in London, wrote in a research report today. “The question is not whether they will renege on their promises, but rather upon which of their promises they will renege, and what form this default will take.” The sovereign-debt crisis is global “and it is not over,” the report said.

Mares said debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is a false indicator of an economy’s health given it doesn’t reflect governments’ available revenue and is “backward- looking.” While the U.S. government’s debt is 53 percent of GDP, one of the lowest ratios among developed nations, its debt as a percentage of revenue is 358 percent, one of the highest, the report said.

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By Mario Rizzo

The Keynesian worldview seems to have led to increasing stridency and dogmatism about economic stimulus, which has dominated the headlines for several months. There used to be a joke that you can teach a parrot economics—all it needs to say is “supply and demand.” Now it is even easier to teach a parrot the policy prescription to prevent a major recession: All it needs to say is “stimulus.”

Things have gotten so bad that no dissention can be tolerated.

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By Vedran Vuk

The Census aims to be every man’s hero. It promises an economic stimulus, a reduction in unemployment, and greater funds for every community. Of course, the reality is much closer to a game of musical chairs with your money. And guess who will be left standing?

The most immediate impact of the Census is that it distorts unemployment rates. With 1.2 million hired temporarily during the fall, the Census is already skewing the unemployment numbers in the government’s favor. Specifically, the fall data shows unemployment at 9.8% (Sept), 10.1% (Oct), and 10% (Nov).

Who can forget the hoopla over the November reduction from 10.1 to 10? To government officials, it was as if the clouds had parted after a relentless hurricane, “proof” that the massive stimulus spending was working.

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By Patrice Hill

The so-called “Great Recession” has left Americans depending on the government dole like never before.

Without record levels of welfare, unemployment and other government benefits as well as tax cuts last year, the income of U.S. households would have plunged by an astonishing $723 billion — more than four times the record $167 billion drop reported last month by the Commerce Department.

Moreover, for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes.

The figures show the devastating results of the massive job losses last year and indicate that the economic recovery that began last summer is tenuous and has a long way to go before many Americans resume life as normal, analysts said.

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Click to watch the video.

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