Screwed: 1,000 at HSBC?

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country and the world.

HSBC Holdings Plc. may cut 1,000 jobs in the UK… IBM will give more than 300 North Carolina employees the axe today… Synovus Financial Corp. is laying off 200 employees in its second round of layoffs since last September… Gibson Guitar will give 70 employees the axe…

Are You a Retro Porn Addict?

There’s something musty in the air. Many of us are finding ourselves sifting through flea markets, queuing up old movies, and eagerly listening to Granny’s tales of days gone by. We’re yearning for simpler times, picking up values cast aside, and coveting objects thrown away. Sometimes we’re putting on our rose-colored glasses and pretending that everything was better in the Land of Long-Ago. Call it retro porn – the urge to romanticize and fetishize the past during hard times.

The marketing world is already hip to the fact that consumers crave the security and comfort of their childhoods during the Recession…

Group-Gardening is All the Rage

If you pick up one new activity this year, we are betting it will be gardening (if you aren’t doing it already). Thanks to a confluence of DIY fads, a need to grow-your-own, and the White House’s own initiative in this area, gardening seems to be taking on an elevated status in the Recession.

Over the weekend, WiseBread dug into (excuse the pun) the White House way of gardening in a group, noting, “That sort of combined effort can be exactly what it takes to create a gardening success.” The key is communication and good planning about what you actually want to grow (in case none of you likes eggplant despite your abundance of seeds) and fairly divvying up the work and expenses…

Out on the Street: Anger is Bad Policy

Each week, “Joe the Trader” chronicles his experiences with life after Wall Street.

Joe the Trader is angry.

I’m angry at AIG, Merrill, and all the companies that are being propped up by the government and still paying people as if it were 2007. In January, I asked a good friend, Colin, who is employed by a troubled bank, how big a hit his bonus payment took.

“It really wasn’t all that bad,” he said. “I was paid down only 40%, but I don’t know how that’s possible—without the government we would be bankrupt.”

Recession Briefing 3.25

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

President Barack Obama went on prime-time television last night to argue that the many efforts he is making to turn the economy around are beginning to take root. “We are beginning to see signs of progress, he said. (BusinessWeek)

“Would you like 10 more three-day weekends per year?” asks Frank Ahrens. “Would you still take them if the third day was unpaid — and if your alternative was getting laid off?” (The Big Money)

The financial devastation of the past year has wreaked havoc on many nest eggs, making money conversations between adult children and their aging parents more important than ever. (Wall Street Journal)

Screwed: 8,000 in New York

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country and the world.
Governor David Paterson ordered the layoffs of 8,900 New York State government workers as part of a new budget proposition, taking effect on July 1st unless successfully argued by the unions… Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has fired upwards of 400 workers… Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center announces plan to lay off no more than 150 employees… General Motors Corp. serves 160 pink slips in Warren, Michigan… Legg Mason Inc. gives 120 employees the axe in another round of layoffs…Arbitron, the media and marketing research firm, plans to layoff 100…

Redux: Bootleg Nation?

Lynn Parramore looks back on the Great Depression to see the path ahead.

How do consumers save when they make less than ever before?

Sometimes, they take their business underground. Call it the Downturn Hustle. As folks tighten their belts on just about everything, certain bootleg activities are on the rise.

That’s nothing new. When Prohibition went into effect in 1920, bootleggers got busy providing alcohol to speakeasies and thirsty consumers. By 1929, the year of the Great Crash, a vast underground industry of black market booze had arisen, an illegal trade unlike any the US had ever seen. Gangsters got rich, grew violent and became celebrities as newspaper stories and movies covered their exploits…

Your Money, Their Rules?

In my early 20s, I spent a bunch of months figuring out what I wanted to “do with my life.” My family was helping me out—and not surprisingly, they had lots of opinions about how I spent my time, not to mention their money. It didn’t take me long to get sick of the grilling, and to realize that I could only make my own choices if I made my own way. I stopped taking checks and started scraping together a living.

What does that have to do with the news? Rumor has it that two former Merrill Lynch stars are leaving Bank of America—because they feared that compensation restrictions on banks that accept TARP money would affect their wallets.

Frugal Fitness

Maybe you’re finding it hard to justify your expensive gym membership. Or maybe, like me, you’ve lost your sweet corporate discount on said expensive gym membership.

Either way, lots of us are looking for less expensive ways to work out. There are some obvious options, like walking or running outside, doing crunches in front of the television, and taking the stairs. But if they were so effective, you probably wouldn’t have joined a gym in the first place, would you?

We’ve found several ways to get a yoga/cardio/muscle-building fix on the cheap. Our promise: None involve using soup cans for bicep curls.

Graduation to Nowhere

I’ve spent no small amount of time thinking about how my life could have been different if I had graduated in another year.

From the first day of senior year in the fall of 2007, (like all seniors) we avoided mentioning the “G word” and cringed when anyone asked what our plans were for the next year. We were still safely ensconced inside the safe, dependable collegiate bubble. The outside world, where concerns over subprime mortgages were slowly mounting, hardly penetrated. Besides, people we knew had graduated and gone to get jobs. Just as we expected we would.

When I did finally graduate in May 2008, Bear Stearns had already collapsed, but I couldn’t see how my experience could fold in on me: I was a double major, graduated magna cum laude, had put in my time as an unpaid intern, and was an editor of a campus magazine at Syracuse University. I expected success and moved to New York so I would be here to interview at a moment’s notice. I signed a one-year lease on an apartment and waited for the interviews and offers to roll in…