Rush Hour: Hostage Crisis at Discovery

Today's hot business topics, boiled down to a couple of arbitrary quotes, comments, and tweets:

On the fatal shooting of Discovery Communications hostage taker James J. Lee, by police, and the release of his three hostages, who were unharmed:

"the guy is obviously a nutter, but it might not be a bad time to begin a national discussion on why we subsidize babies and children through the tax code." —katoom, commenting at Huffington Post.

"Because no society ever progressed by having a declining population. Try and find one, you won't." —johnqpublic, commenting at Huffington Post.

On an unexpectedly strong report on manufacturing, which sparked a rally in which major stock indexes jumped as much as 3 percent, the best showing in two months:

"All this means NOTHING, if you don't have a job, which applies to 1 in 10 working-age Americans. We won't be out of the woods until unemployment and inflation are kept below 6% and 3%, respectively, for at least three consecutive quarters--and even then, the GAO is still projecting a 10 TRILLION dollar deficit over the next few decades." —GregMaragos, commenting at the Los Angeles Times.

"Me thinks something smells mighty fishy---do you think the government might have something to do with not letting it fall below 10,000 ?" —Sue Diehl, commenting at CNN.

On the U.S. auto industry reporting the worst sales for the month of August in 27 years:

"Of course, the ill-advised rebates sucked away future demand. There are still no jobs out there and the jobs that people are getting are paying less. And people are surprised that the auto industry is started to slump again?" —Eric Black, commenting at CNN.

"Good bye Ed Whitaker, salesmen of the moment. GM, isn't any better today than the day you took over. Who in their right mind would invest in GM, when there isn't enough money to pay the pensions for the UAW retires?" —Swedish, commenting at MarketWatch.