Oh my, is this story embarassing:

Ten months into President Barack Obama's first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn't matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama's argument that more road money would address an "urgent need to accelerate job growth."

The headlines are all on fire with China exports increase 17.7% in a year.

China’s exports surged in December and imports rose to a record in a stronger-than-forecast trade rebound that may lessen the case for governments to sustain stimulus programs this year.

Exports climbed 17.7 percent from a year earlier, the first increase in 14 months, and imports jumped 55.9 percent, the customs bureau said on its Web site yesterday. Year-on-year comparisons are affected by declines from late 2008 as the global credit crisis deepened.

But what is hilarious is the assumption China would somehow re-evaluate their currency due to these figures.

Digging deeper, we see that China has increased imports 55.9%. Raw commodities are the thing that stands out on imports:

In December 2008, the Boston Consulting Group, which advises PE firms, predicted that almost 50 percent of PE-owned companies would probably default on their debt by the end of 2011.

Mr. Kosman, with a background as an editor at Mergermarket.com, former senior editor at The Deal, and reporter for Buyouts Newsletter, is presently a business reporter at the New York Post. He does a masterful job of recounting the history of private equity (PE); until the early '90s formerly referred to as LBO firms (Leveraged BuyOut), which first came to widespread attention during the age of the "junk bond" and the resultant S&L meltdown during the 1980s.