While the S&P500 and Nasdaq indexes both finished slightly in the red, the widely held ETFs that track them produced modest gains while the big stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a 5.5 percent improvement or, an 8.1 percent return including dividends.

Some media-watchers have called this a hit-job after Paul had risen to a statistical tie for the lead in some Iowa polls and it’s hard not to come away with that impression when you examine Shieffer’s words closely, as was done by Paul Mulshine of the New Jersey Star Ledger in the article No wonder these talking heads don’t like talking to Ron Paul.

Strategists See Biggest S&P 500 Gain Since ’98

Wall Street strategists say the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, after falling within 1 percent of a bear market this week, will post the biggest fourth-quarter rally in 13 years even after they cut forecasts at a rate exceeded only during the credit crisis.

The benchmark index for U.S. stocks will climb 14 percent from yesterday to end 2011 at 1,300, according to the average estimate of 12 strategists surveyed by Bloomberg. The last time they were this bullish in October was 2008, when the group predicted a 27 percent gain and the index lost 18 percent.

Analysts from Oppenheimer & Co. to UBS AG and Barclays Plc say equities will rebound from a decline of 19 percent since April as policy makers prevent a default by Greece and profit in the S&P 500 climb to $95.85 a share in 2011. Europe’s worsening debt crisis and the U.S. government’s loss of its AAA credit rating led strategists to cut their S&P 500 forecast in the past two months from an average level of 1,401.

“Investors are way too bearish and are being swayed by macro variables,” Brian Belski, the New York-based chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer, wrote in an e-mail on Oct. 4. “Fundamentals drive stocks,” he said. “U.S. portfolios are not positioned for a positive third-quarter earnings season.”

It is very true that sentiment is worse than the underlying economic fundamentals that, so far, are only indicating sluggish growth or a very mild recession, though, after the 2008 experience, it’s understandable that the mood of the stock buying public has soured in advance of any major decline for either the economy or equities.

Based on the video above – now with their own food kitchen and media center in New York City – it looks as though they’re planning to hang around for a while, some now thinking that the group could have an impact on the 2012 elections.

• Bush’s Tragic Legacy: How 9/11 Triggered America’s Decline
• Opinion: Ten Lost Years

Some highlights from the first:

“American exceptionalism” was always the US’s trump card. The new candidates for the White House still refer to it in the election campaign, but it sounds like a hollow mantra — one of those election promises that shouldn’t be examined too closely.

Because if it was, then people might realize that many things in America are only exceptional because they are exceptionally bad. The country has lousy health statistics despite having one of the most expensive health care systems in the world. Then there are the billions wasted in education, not to mention the armaments madness — the US spends almost as much on defense as the rest of the world put together.

And then there is the fixation on a financial system that rewards gamblers, where the country’s most talented young people no longer work on developing new patents, but devote themselves to financial wizardry. Meanwhile, China and other emerging economies can happily concentrate on their own ascent.

And from the second:

The policy of the United States after 9/11 wasn’t merely immoral. It actually damaged the country. The roughly 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11 were followed by more than 6,000 dead American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, countless civilian victims, 5 million refugees and costs currently estimated at more than $3 trillion (€2.13 trillion).

What should the West have done after the attacks on America? The “War on Terror” should have ended when al-Qaida was driven out of Afghanistan. Instead, the United States turned it into an ideological world war.

It expended so many of it resources in this struggle, beyond all reasonable measure, that it led to shifts in the global tectonics of power. The rise of China, which may have been unstoppable already, was accelerated. The United States overestimated its abilities, and the neocons’ fantasies of omnipotence failed as a result.

Yikes! Maybe they’re just mad about the whole Greek default thing…

I suppose this would just be funny rather than both funny and disturbing had Romer not uttered the line with a giggle in her belly and a twinkle in her eye. As it was, viewers were left with the impression that: a) she’s quite happy to be thousands of miles away from Washington, and b) we really are ‘Pretty Darn F**ked’.

In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression, these are the ramshackle homes of the desperate and destitute U.S. families who have set up their own ‘Tent City’ only an hour from Manhattan.

More than 50 homeless people have joined the community within New Jersey’s forests as the economic crisis has wrecked their American dream.

And as politicians in Washington trade blows over their country’s £8.8 trillion debt, the prospect of more souls joining this rag tag group grows by the day.

Building their own tarpaulin tents, Native American teepees and makeshift balsa wood homes, every one of the Tent City residents has lost their job.

These people have been reduced to living on handouts from the local church and friendly restaurants and the community is a sad look at troubles caused as the world’s most powerful country struggles with its finances.

Based on the interviews, they are a surprisingly upbeat group given their circumstances, a renewed sense of community fostered by common financial difficulties apparently making a very unpleasant situation a bit more tolerable.

Gross sees the next round of quantitative easing taking the form of extended period language for zero short-term interest rates and the setting of caps for long-term rates.

A related story by Neil Irwin in the Washington Post neatly summarized the situation:

With the U.S. economy flatlining and at risk of falling into a new recession, the Federal Reserve lacks good tools to do much of anything about it — though that won’t necessarily stop the central bank from trying.

With a whiff of deflation in yesterday’s report on personal income and spending (see this related story in the New York Times), it would appear that sufficient cover may be developing for the central bank to again crank up the printing press this fall.

If not for the growing headwinds facing the global economy and Japan – rising food prices, rising energy prices, rising debt troubles, and the possibility of widespread contamination due to the nuclear crisis to name just a few – buying Japanese stocks “with both hands” would seem to make a good deal of sense.

But, with those concerns casting a pall over markets this spring, I’m not so sure…

First, from Detroit, this CNN/Money story tells how the local government has taken another step toward finding a long-term solution for a decades long decline in population and a more recent development – a growing budget deficit.

Michigan approves plan to close half of Detroit schools

In an effort to close a yawning budget deficit, Michigan has approved a proposal to drastically shrink Detroit’s troubled school system over the next few years.

The plan calls for the closure of 70 schools, which would cut the number of schools in the district in half by 2014, leaving only 72 public schools in Detroit. The closures would be on top of the 59 that were shuttered last year. As a result, high school class sizes would jump to 60 students each over the next few years.

And, in Saudi Arabia, the AP reports that the royal family is about to spend billions of dollars in the hope that what is now happening in Libya never happens in their desert kingdom.

Saudi opens its wallet to stave off protests

As Saudi Arabia’s 86-year-old monarch returned home from back surgery, his government tried to get ahead of potential unrest in the oil-rich country Wednesday by announcing an unprecedented economic package that will provide Saudis interest-free home loans, unemployment assistance and sweeping debt forgiveness.

The total cost was estimated at 135 billion Saudi riyals ($36 billion), but this was not largesse. Saudi Arabia clearly wants no part of the revolts and bloodshed sweeping the already unsettled Arab world.

Once again, “you don’t know whether to laugh or cry” after reading things like this – another phrase that seems to roll easily off of the tongues of a lot of people these days.