Most economists have agreed that the US recession will continue through June 2009. But today's news proves that many more months of bleeding will occur before we have a chance to recover (and let's not forget that our recovery could be handicapped or delayed further by a continued global credit crunch). Today's news of over 50,000 announced layoffs, revised tonight to over 70,000, is just stunning. We were averaging over 200,000 layoffs a month, but at this rate, we could soon see half a million per month.

For the best analysis and forecasts, I continue to read Paul Krugman's blog and columns for the NY Times. He's been busy writing and spending time on TV defending Barack Obama.Defending Obama is admirable, but it is not Krugman's job. While I think that Obama has asked Krugman to be an unpaid advisor (heck, just reading Krugman's blog and articles would be more valuable than any paid economic advisor's words), Obama needs to find more surrogates and defenders who can do television interviews regularly.