Our Economic Kabuki Show Continues

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Well, it looks like Macroeconomic Advisors was right:

The American economy slowed to a crawl in the first quarter, but economists are hopeful that the setback will be temporary. Total output grew at an annual pace of 1.8 percent from January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday, after having expanded at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

It’s a little hard to know what to say about this aside from the usual: our big problem right now is sluggish growth and high unemployment, but no one seems to care about that anymore. It’s all inflation and deficits and the weak dollar. Paul Krugman will undoubtedly write a few blistering columns about this, everyone will shrug because it’s just Krugman being Krugman, and then we’ll go back to our usual right-wing kabuki show over inflation and deficits and the weak dollar.

And growth will remain lousy and unemployment will stay high and we’ll all pretend there was nothing we could have done about it.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

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If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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