Plummet, Drop, Tumble, Plunge, Fall
First, some things are rising.

Awhile ago (though he doesn't talk about it much any more) Bush said that exporting jobs to other lands was a good thing for the economy. However, now we learn that the only people it's good for are the CEOs of the companies exporting the jobs:

Report Says CEOs of Companies With Greatest Outsourcing Got Biggest Pay

Average CEO compensation at the 50 companies outsourcing the most service jobs rose by 46 percent in 2003 from a year earlier, compared with a 9 percent increase for CEOs at 365 big companies overall, the study by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy found. [ed. never forget to tell us this. AP religiously tells us that polls, reports, briefings, from the right are right-leaning, don't they? don't they?]

Outsourcing of jobs has become a sensitive issue, and President Bush has largely avoided the subject in public appearances during the political campaign. [ed. and no one is allowed to ask him, since all appearances are scripted] Some of his economic advisers have said that exporting labor to low-cost countries will reduce business costs, boost companies' financial performance and thereby improve the U.S. economy.

Yeah, boosting it all the way to the bank, so it can be contributed back again to the RNC. Would be interesting to mash list of CEOs against list of contributors. Oh, I see they've done some of this already:

The study also found that CEOs of the 70 companies that helped finance this summer's Democratic and Republican National Conventions had an average pay increase of 49 percent in 2003, compared with a 9 percent average rise for CEOs overall.

Now the drop, plunge, plummet -- the headline writers are still thumbing the thesaurus:

Consumer Confidence in Potty

The plunge in the Conference Board's consumer confidence index, which fell to 98.2 in August from 105.7 in July, raised concerns on Wall Street that oil prices, while now falling, have already damaged the economic recovery.

What economic recovery? I still haven't seen one. If I did, my paintings would be selling. Bush World analysts have this sixth sense for seeing things that are dead and getting deader as alive and thriving. The usual adjective added in some of the stories: "unexpected" -- as in "unexpected plummet."

Back later with more.

- posted by Cynthia @ 10:36 AM | | | Link |