Quotables

"Everyone guessed wrong."

Vice President Joe Biden on administration predictions earlier this year that its stimulus plan would keep the unemployment rate at or below 8 percent. The unemployment rate is currently 9.4 percent.

"We are fed up, disgusted, disrespected, and angry."

Bermuda resident Janice Battersbee on the decision by the government to allow four Guantanamo prisoners from China to settle on the island.

"I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father, who lost [his] life."

Erik von Brunn, the son of James von Brunn, 88, who is accused of killing security guard Stephen Johns in a June 10 attack on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that . . . Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble."

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, in a 2002 column unearthed by blogger Arnold Kling, on the supposed need for a housing bubble.

"I don't feel a day over 84."

Former President George H.W. Bush, on celebrating his 85th birthday by making a tandem skydiving jump. "Just because you're an old guy, you don't have to sit around drooling in the corner," Bush said. "Get out and do something. Get out and enjoy life."

"There's an inability to deal with reality."

New York Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick, on the unwillingness of state lawmakers to confront public workers unions over their lavish pensions, even as the state faces a financial crisis. Newsday found records showing that 1,325 retirees receive six-figure pensions from the state. Former Commack, N.Y., Superintendent James Hunderfund receives $316,245 per year, the largest of the pensions.