The “Yahoo! News: Top Stories” summary just had these two AP headlines back to back: “Payrolls drop for 1st time since 2003” and “Exxon Mobil posts record profits“.

That strikes me as the perfect 5 second summary of Bush’s economy. Or, more sadly, of what happened to the country under Bush’s economy.

The payroll story tells us:

Nervous employers cut 17,000 jobs in January — the first such reduction in more than four years and a fresh trouble sign that the economy is in danger of stalling.
[...]
Job losses were widespread. Manufacturers, construction firms and a variety of professional and business services eliminated jobs in January — reflecting the toll of the housing and credit debacles. The government cut jobs, too. All those cuts swamped job gains in education, health care, retailing and elsewhere.

Wage growth also slowed, another indication that employers are tightening their belts amid the economic slowdown.
[...]
Taken together, the figures suggested that employers have grown cautious as they try to cope with fallout from housing and credit problems and rising worry about the ailing economy.

Economists were predicting employers would boost payrolls by around 70,000…

Fears of a recession have grown.

The Exxon Mobil story provides this counter-point:

Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company — $40.6 billion — as the world’s largest publicly traded oil company benefited from historic crude prices at year’s end.

Exxon also set a U.S. record for the biggest quarterly profit, posting net income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of 2007, besting its own mark of $10.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005.

The previous record for annual profit was $39.5 billion, which Exxon Mobil reported for 2006.

If you’re so inclined, you can call that short and sweet. That was the entire AP story (at least, as of 6:20 am PST).

There’ll be dancing in the streets, won’t there? Chants of “USA! USA!”? A fine upstanding American company, beating its own previous world record! What could be sweeter? Just what America needs to hear to revive our flagging morale as we prepare to be personally pummeled by Bush’s economy.

And let’s also give credit where credit is due. Both the current and former record were achieved partly due to tax break handouts from the Bush-Cheney regime (both of those fine gentlemen, of course, having no personal reason whatsoever to be interested in the oil business or its profits).