“We were misinformed about how bad things are,” said President Obama recently.

Misinformed? One-eighth of his way through his first term, and Obama's still blaming others for the economy? That might be reasonable -- if it weren't for the fact that improving the economy was a pillar of his candidacy.

Since inauguration, Obama's done the following: He's blatantly broken bankruptcy laws in his dealings with Chrysler, GM (GMGMQ), and the banks; he's spent some $2 trillion on “stimulus;” and he's vowed -- but utterly failed -- to keep unemployment even marginally in check. This is not the behavior of a man dealing with small problems. This is the behavior of a man who is very nearly panicked.

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Had lawmakers actually paid attention to any, let alone all, of the public information in today’s graph, we’d be full-blown socialists already.

Here’s what I’m watching as I consider -- and try to suppress my horror at -- the idea that the President and Vice President have only just realized that the economy's not strong.

• I got an email last night calling me, in effect, a stock-tease for not offering a trade idea on Alcoa (AA). In response, I humbly offer last night’s news release and today’s price action. After parsing what was actually said, I think we learned absolutely nothing from Alcoa yesterday. It opened strong and is now lower as investors collectively shrug their shoulders.
  
  If you’re looking for random stock picks on names I think simply don't matter, I can suggest a few TV programs to watch. But none in which I’ve taken part, since I'm not in the habit of making “open guess” stock picks.
  
  
• On that point, you may notice my retail round-up is increasingly unrelated to retail. The news is terrible and will remain so. What’s more, the shippers are importing fewer and fewer goods. That means they can’t win the upcoming back-to-school or holiday seasons. They'll either be understocked and have too few sizes available, or have too few customers. Nonetheless, there will be a few winners. They’ll be names I think as relatively “safe” as (Target (TGT) and Wal-Mart (WMT)).