"The president spent the last few months talking about the past. Now all they can do is talk about the future. What aren't they talking about? What's happening right now." ...Sometimes you learn the most by noticing what politicians don't say.

Think of your biggest financial risk: it's not your stock portfolio, it's losing your paycheck. That's why unemployment is the single best measure of economic health—when people can't earn a living, everything else in the data is just background noise. And unemployment is rising.

Campaigns toss out wage numbers like $1,300 here, $1,800 there, $3,300 for someone else. If independent economists and official data can’t reproduce them, treat them like a bad check: sounds nice, but it doesn’t clear. Evidence beats applause lines.