Why is America Discussing Anthony Weiner's, Ahem, Wiener?

Perhaps because we (or, rather, our media gatekeepers) would prefer not to talk about this:

The last month has been a horror show for the U.S. economy, with economic data falling off a cliff, according to Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London.

Wait, I thought we were in the 2nd year of a recovery. The CNBC interview also sez:

"US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing."


"And that’s just in the last week and a bit," said Riddell.

There's more, according to the Washington Post (via the Strib):

May showed the slowest rate of expansion in the nation's factories since September 2009. The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday that its index of manufacturing activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 in April.


Numbers above 50 indicate expansion, and analysts had expected a more modest pullback to 57.1. New orders and production fell the lowest, likely triggered by disruptions in automobile and other production after the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which has hurt supply chains around the world.

"Earlier in its recovery, manufacturing had the wind at its back from a very pronounced rebuilding of inventories," said Cliff Waldman, economist at the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a trade group. "At this point, however, elevated commodity prices, slowing global growth and an increasingly questionable outlook for the U.S. economy are creating head winds for the factory sector, which thus far has been the one strong element in an otherwise sluggish U.S. economic rebound."

In other words, it's easy to surmise the reason why we're talking about Weiner -- it's because we are well and truly screwed.