Celebrate the recession's end, if you like, but it's not over. Barack Obama's Recovery Act is softening the blow to state budgets, but that's only temporary. The shit continues to roll downhill from Wall Street to Main Street, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out (though not in those words) in "Additional Federal Fiscal Relief Needed to Help States Address Recession's Impact":

We're talking about nearly a million jobs still to be lost, on top of the current 10 percent jobless rate, which some think is on its way up to 12 or 13 percent.

Two WSJ stories this morning that capture the radically contrasting moods of America: "Frugality Moves In for Long Stay" focuses on ordinary Americans freaking out at the high unemployment rate and trying to save their pennies.

Meanwhile, Wall Street's resuming its "pro-risk strategies" with deal after deal, as are other world markets, as the WSJ points out in "Futures Rise as Risk Appetite Grows." See this Reuters piece about the deals being fueled by cheap money.

The White House will be crowing today, according to early reports, that its stimulus has helped create and/or save about 650,000 jobs. Barack Obama's crew will tout this as a sign of success. Maybe others will see this as yet another sign that the Great Recession is supposedly over.

CNN early this morning came flat out and headlined, "Stimulus creates 650,000 jobs."

Wise not to be too hasty about this as a sign that things are getting better for anyone but Wall Street. Go deeper into the subject with the Economic Policy Institute's analysis of the White House's Recovery.gov reports. On the eve of today's release of the 650,000 figure, the EPI said the website's reports from federal contractors are "a substantial step toward federal accountability and transparency" but cautioned that "the estimates of the numbers of job created or retained by individual recipients are deeply flawed in many cases."

This thoughtful debunking is not coming from a right-wing group, either. The EPI is definitely a liberal think tank, though not a knee-jerk defender of the Obama administration.

It's vital for the administration — not for the country but for the White House — to crank up the p.r. about the supposed size of job creation. The question is whether the Obama administration is focusing more on convincing us that the recession is over than on taking firmer steps to actually end the recession.

California's Zigzag on Welfare Rules Worries Experts (NYT)

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reverses field, relaxes stance on traditional welfare. But he has to, considering the desperate straits that California is in.

For some reason, this New York Times story on the relaxation of California's Draconian welfare laws is written from the view of Marie Antoinette or some other precursor of Ruth Madoff.

Is the tide turning for the public option? (Salon)

"As healthcare reform moves to backroom talks, supporters say its chances may be improving."

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U.S. Losing Ground on Preventable Deaths: Despite High Medical Spending, Results Trail Other Wealthy Countries (WashPost)

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Pay Czar Targets Salary Cuts (WSJ)

Ken Feinberg might actually be planning a crackdown. Instead of cash, execs would have to take stock that they couldn't fuck with for several years. "Most intrusive [move] yet into corporate compensation."

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Obama Weighs Spending to Stem Job Cuts Without Second Stimulus (Bloomberg)

Or at least without something that carries the label "stimulus." More gullible NYT story here.

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One-Third of Wall Street Workers Expect Bigger Bonus This Year (Bloomberg)

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U.S. Seeks to Restrict Gift Giving to Bloggers (WSJ)

Cracking down on the shilling of products "for fun and profit." Bloggers supposedly have to reveal freebies or money they get for writing product reviews. Also cracking down on celebrity endorsements.

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Recession Spells End for Many Family Businesses (WSJ)

The ones that Wal-Mart and fast-food chains hadn't already killed.

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Google to blight smartphones with big ads (Register U.K.)

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Prepaid, but Not Prepared for Debit Card Fees (NYT)

Yet another legal scam foisted upon a recession-plagued public.

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Comedian pitches $100k for Twitter account: Drew Carey eyes @drew for charity (Register U.K.)

If you're willing to pay $100,000 to outbid Drew Carey, then you have too much money. Cancer becomes a Twitter game.

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A month ahead of schedule: "Boo!!" GM's September sales dropped 45 percent from a year earlier, and Chrysler's fell 42 percent. Sounds like collusion to me. Ford, the only one of the three not directly bailed out, dropped only 5.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the stock market suffered a severe case of the heebie-jeebies, the Dow industrials plummeting 140 points by mid-afternoon in what the WSJ termed a "precipitous drop."

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Saturn to Close After Sale Falls Through (WSJ)

About 13,000 workers will be shit out of luck, but impact on nation's unemployment rate will be miniscule. Meanwhile, bad news in New York for jobless: "Mayor Bloomberg vows to snuff out smoking in parks, beaches." No job, no hope, and now no cigarettes. Stop, you're killing us.

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Dow, Up 15%, Has Best Quarter Since '98 (WSJ)

Bubble news: "Many of the riskiest stocks" led the charge. What happens when the Fed starts to dismantle its supports propping up the whole thing? You think this is a real bull market? Story doesn't judge that, but it does paint the most rosy picture of the turbulent market: "Corporate profits have come in above reduced expectations, in large part due to cost cutting." So what happens to profits after the cost-cutting slows down, which it inevitably has to?

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Google Wave Invites for Sale on eBay (WSJ)

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Zuckerberg Now Worth $2 Billion, Says Forbes (Silicon Valley Insider)

Facebook CEO is the richest American who primarily wears T-shirts.

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The Balance Sheet: Interview with Joseph Stiglitz (New Yorker, James Surowiecki)

Click above video or here.

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Wall Street Wizardry Reworks Mortgages (WSJ)

"A new wave of financial alchemy" to "make soured securities look better." A test for regulators. Matthew Goldstein of Reuters warns, "Beware the bull market in derivatives."

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Swiss Health Care Thrives Without Public Option (NYT)

Highly misleading propaganda piece against the "public option." Switzerland offers strong, immediate public subsidies of health care to its citizenry, and that could have been the story's spin just as easily as this one conjured up by the Times.

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A Dealmaker Out of Time: And With Lewis, an Earlier Era on Wall Street Fades (WSJ)

"Ken Lewis was shot with his own gun." David Weidner asks: "Exactly who pulled the trigger?" (And in a nation that's running short of bullets, who was lucky enough to buy the ammo?) For speculation on the next Bank of America outlaw, see the NY Post's "He's not even cold: Top dealmakers already being eyed for Lewis job."

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What's worse than the destruction of jobs? The permanent destruction of jobs. Just because the market's humming right along for now doesn't mean that the jobless rate is going to suddenly drop toward normalcy.

Barack Obama's future will only get more complicated. Hidden in a rambling Bloomberg piece by Rich Miller are some really harsh truths about the unemployment rate, the deficit, and the interest rate. Plus the differentiation, if it's even possible, between the mere destruction of jobs and the permanent destruction of jobs in industries ranging from housing to finance.

Good details to skim before you tackle Liam Halligan's screed in the Telegraph (U.K.) about the hot air produced by Obama and others at the G-20 summit in already polluted Pittsburgh.

U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio (NYT)

Hedge funds recovering, mergers and acquisitions are starting up again, the big banks are frantically trying to figure out how to spin their impending resumption of big bonuses. Meanwhile, "the job market is bleaker than ever in the current recession."

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Trustee Plans to Sue Madoff Family Members for $198 Million (NYT)

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Sharp Drop in Start-Ups Bodes Ill for Jobs, Growth Outlook (WSJ)

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Higher Open Seen for Stocks (WSJ)

"U.S. stock futures are pointing toward a higher open, rebounding modestly from the market's worst week since early July."

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No reform, just a cosmetic patch (Telegraph U.K., Liam Halligan)

A pox on the G-20, at which "the lack of questioning of the status quo was spectacular." Halligan notes: "Obama's oratory was typically impressive. The trouble is, it wasn't true. ... Nothing 'bold' was done to lessen systemic dangers or overhaul the global regulatory regime."

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The Curious Case of the Nets' Ownership ((WSJ)

Russian oligarch's pending purchase of New Jersey Nyets continues an odd, tragicomic history of ownership of the franchise that once boasted Dr. J. Funny little story by Brad Parks notes that Bruce Ratner, who bought the team in 2004 for $300 million, wound up spending about $1.5 million per win.

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Profits Poised to Surprise Again (WSJ)

Even bears are optimistic about impact on market. "One big reason for the market's continued strength is that expectations were so low for the economy and corporate earnings that the market was able to rise even on modestly good news."

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`Black Swan' Author Taleb Asks Why Bernanke, Geithner Still Holding Posts (Bloomberg)

Nassim Taleb tells biz leaders in Hong Kong: "Bernanke, Geithner and Summers didn't see the crisis coming so why are they still there?"

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Emerging economies get new role (BBC)

G-20 roundup from Pittsburgh. Click on the above video for Russian TV footage of black-clad cops rousting black-clad protesters, as a robotic-sounding voice emanates from a police loudspeaker: "No matter what your purpose is, you must leave." NYT story here.

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Twitter's Value Is Set at $1 Billion (WSJ)

Thanks to all of you who get paid nothing by Twitter despite your being its only product/asset, the company that hasn't yet generated any significant revenue is about to get $100 million in new funding. In August 2008, Twitter had 4.3 million unique visitors; this August it had 54.7 million. Now hooked, users are, like it or not, about to be bombarded by advertisers and marketers. Too bad most of you are either out of work or otherwise can't afford to buy all the shit you'll be told to buy. (See next item.)

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The Long Slog: Out of Work, Out of Hope (WSJ)

Typically excellent human-interest WSJ story, this one focuses on jobless Americans. Introducing an array of hard-luck yarns: "Nearly 15 million Americans are jobless, and the number is widely expected to remain high even as the economy slowly begins to recover. Part of the problem many of the unemployed face: the very fact that they have been out of work a long time."

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IPO Market Snaps Back as Taste for Risk Returns (WSJ)

Five companies go public — the biggest IPO week in a year and a half. One of them is electric-car battery maker A123 Systems. Two others are REITs.

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Boss blames smartphones for stress as company suicide rate comes under scrutiny (The Age, Melbourne)

CFO at France's biggest telecom warns that, as story says, "the barrage of emails from smartphones and personal computers was stressing out employees."

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Market's Eyes Are Bigger Than Its Stomach; Chokes On New Supply (StreetInsider.com)

Double bubble trouble.

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Yes, Celebs Have Tax Issues Too (ABC News)

No, not a reality show, but a slideshow.

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