The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news....

...could you imagine the news stories if there was a Republican in the White House?

33 Shocking Facts Showing the Economic Downturn Since Obama Became President.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

Americans are still dropping out of the work force at a record pace:

The jobs report showed the unemployment rate dropping a bit, to 7.6 percent. But the number of jobs created — 88,000 — was far less than expected, and a big reason the unemployment rate fell is because nearly half a million people dropped out of the workforce.

The media is obligingly carrying the Democrats' water by pointing at the sequester, which allows them to ignore the factor that is more important since it kicked in with the first paycheck in the New Year, namely the  increase in payroll taxes. 

Also in the "The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news" file, Walter Russell Mead writes:

We are, however, thrilled that we don’t have a Republican in the White House, because if we did, the press would be incessantly yammering about this bad news until we were all sick of it. As it is, they are likely to say as little as possible about what appears to be a massive failure of economic policy and go back to covering the really important issues, like gay marriage.

If a Republican president got very busy on social issues at a time of economic stagnation and disappointment, there would be earnest hand-wringing of the “What’s Wrong with Kansas” variety about how American rubes were being diverted from their true economic interests by the skillful manipulation of emotionally charged social issues and identity politics. This would be taken as a sign of the cynicism of the ruling party and the clueless credulity of the hypnotized voters.

Fortunately, we aren’t going to have to listen to any of that depressing rhetoric now. Social issues are good and important; economic questions like jobs and incomes and growth are a distraction from the real business of the people.

Why is Germany re-patrioting its gold?

First answer, why not?  It's not like the USSR is going to invade.

Second answer, in case it needs to rebuild its currency:

Central banks, investment funds, and individuals hold gold mainly as a hedge against volatility in currencies or in financial markets. Lately, the principal interest in gold has been as a hedge against inflation. But it is also useful for other things: For instance, having very large gold reserves is a handy thing indeed if you should need to construct an entirely new currency from scratch, as Germany may very well be obliged to do should the euro disintegrate. France could have to do so as well — which the cynical mind might see as a good argument for Germans to keep German gold in Germany rather than in France. It is worth keeping in mind that while we are all good liberal democrats now, Germany and France have been at war within Mick Jagger’s lifetime and twice in John Gielgud’s. Ancestral mistrust does not evaporate in one or two generations.

As the endless euro crisis continues to inflict damage on the German economy, the Germans must certainly be asking themselves what exactly they get out of the euro, and out of “Europe.” While there are some appreciable efficiencies from the reduction of foreign-exchange costs and trade benefits from the reduction of exchange-rate uncertainty, most of the economic benefits Germany derives from European economic and political integration could be had with nothing more exotic than free trade and liberal immigration rules. During the lead-up to the euro’s debut, there was endless discussion of the single currency’s benefits. And there have been benefits. But there have been costs, too: very high costs. If the Germans should decide that those costs are too great to bear, Berlin is going to want those gold reserves at hand.