The New York Times and other outlets report that the Congressional Budget Office has some bad forecasts amid a torrent of bad economic news. The CBO projects that food stamps will be used by some 28 million Americans this year. That number is an all-time high and prompted the UK's Independent to declare that these levels of food stamp use indicate the United States is headed for or currently in a new Great Depression.

Reader ST writes:

George, After reading your comments about the Treasury Secretary's new proposal, I thought you might want to read this article by Paul Krugman. He is a full Professor of Economics at Princeton.

Links added for reference. The aforementioned article is essentially an indictment of Treasury Secretary Paulson's — and by extension, the Bush administration's — new financial regulatory strategy as little more than a new org chart one might see in a Dilbert strip. I think Krugman's right.

Spend more - Produce less - Burma Shave:

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.