BUSTING THE ECONOMIC BODY COUNT GAME:

Watching Fox News Sunday, I caught a panel on which Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee conceded that the administration had previously predicted unemployment would top out at around 8%, that it was now up to 9.4%, and that double-digit unemployment was a distinct possibility in the near future. Goolsbee didn’t resort to the administrations’s blather about “saving or creating jobs,” but he did repeat its fustian about how last month’s loss of 345,000 jobs (resulting in a half percentage point jump in the jobless rate) is somehow good news because it beat predictions (I don’t recall him sayind whose) of even more dire loss numbers. It made me wonder why, if those predictions either existed or were serious, the Obama administration would have previously predicted that unemployment would top out at 8%?

I’m waiting for the press comparisons with McNamara’s Vietnam number-juggling. . . . .