Lemonade Maker: Brendan Barry, RainMan

Profiles of people who are seeing opportunity in a pile of economic lemons.

Brendan Barry, Rainwater Harvester

Location: Raleigh-Durham, NC

Before recession: Excavating Contractor

Now: Owner at North Carolina Rainwater Harvesting. Barry’s company installs above/underground systems for home and business owners.

Q. When did you notice a shift in the economic climate?

A. As an excavating contractor, I saw a building slowdown in Massachusetts in 2007. Watching friends fight over any crumb that fell from the home building table became too much to bear. Coaxed by siblings and a perception of a better local economy down south, I closed my sewer, water and grading biz and moved to NC the following December.

Recession Briefing 3.18

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

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is vowing to recoup the hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded to AIG employees after the company took government assistance. (Bloomberg)

Consumer prices were up last month for the biggest monthly gain since July — led by higher prices for gasoline and apparel — calming fears of deflation. (New York Times)

Screwed: 2,454 at Caterpillar Inc.

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

Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. will be laying off 2,454 employees in Illinois, Indiana, and Georgia… Nokia plans 1,700 layoffs worldwide… The partnership between Kaiser Permanente and IBM will result in 860 layoffs at the Oakland-based Kaiser… Daewoo Bus Global Corp., the first major Korean company to practice major downsizing this year, will fire 507 employees, cutting its workforce by 38.5 percent… Weyerhaeuser Co. will close two more lumber mills, affecting 300 Oregon and Oklahoma workers – 1.5 percent of its workforce… Chicago’s Resurrection Healthcare sheds 125 management positions… The News & Observer Publishing Co. is letting go of 78 employees, or 11 percent of its workforce… The Idaho Statesman will give 25 employees the axe…

Redux: The Self-Help Industry

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

Can we help ourselves out of the downturn?

Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help.
~The Beatles

Self-improvement is in the American cultural DNA. After all, the pursuit of happiness is one of our inalienable rights. From the get-go, American society was relatively fluid in its class structure compared to European counterparts. This dynamic situation encouraged people to believe that perseverance and hard work could bring the bluebird of happiness flapping to their door. Founding Father Ben Franklin was a self-improvement guru, outlining strategies for attaining moral perfection and improving body and mind. Franklin, was a pragmatist, too. He didn’t shy away from investigating the most orderly, self-disciplined path for the accumulation of wealth…

The Repo Men

President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner are calling on AIG executives – some of them newly minted millionaires – to return their million-dollar bonuses (to be fair, some received a little less than that). We commend their initiative—but wait, what initiative? So far, we’ve seen “calls for” the executives to step up and act like big girls and boys and hand back the money.

And so if they don’t, we’re wondering if Obama and Geithner might take things into their own hands—go after the money themselves. What would that look like?

Should Yuppies Take Food Stamps?

Lunch in Tribeca with a friend and former colleague, an Ivy Leaguer who still has his media job. He looks at me over the comfort food that he will very kindly expense and asks, casually: “So are you eligible for food stamps?”

I think he is joking. Then I realize he isn’t.

“No! Of course not.” I pause. “Wait, am I?”

I can’t remember that last time I was so taken aback by a question—much less confronted with big questions about identity, need, and most of all, my own prejudices.

Desks, Desks, Millions of Empty Desks

When I found out last fall I was going to be laid off, visions of isolation began dancing through my head. I would be stuck working at my tiny desk in a gloomy corner of my 12 x 17 studio, all day long. Alone.

I quickly recruited several other office-less friends, all willing to spend $200 a month to avoid working at home. And then, I set out in search of desks.

With millions of square feet emptying out in cities all over the country, vacant cubicles have become legion and commercial lease holders very nervous. Here’s how you can make that work for you:

Screwed: 5,000 at UBS

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

UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, plans to eliminate up to 5,000 senior and management positions in the coming weeks… Swiss drug maker, Roche, cuts 1,500 New Jersey-based jobs in an effort to relocate operations to California… Cymer announces 130 layoffs in San Diego… Getty Images lays off 110 employees, 5 percent of its global workforce…

Recession Briefing 3.17

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

Why, exactly, does AIG have a legal obligation to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in “bonuses?“ Because employees’ contracts tie them to performance benchmarks. Still, the Obama Administration is trying to figure out a way to get that money back. (Slate, New York Times)

Banks aren’t liking the “stress test” that the government is applying in connection to the TARP bailout funds. The chairman of Wells Fargo yesterday called the government’s plan “asinine.” (Bloomberg)

Recession Dispatch from…London

LONDON, UK: For Londoners like me old enough to remember the last recession, the signs are all too familiar: two-for-one offers at restaurants; forests of To Let (for rent) signs lining the city’s residential streets; familiar bars and shops closing down by the day (where to buy a reasonably-priced brown earthenware teapot now that Woolworth’s has gone out of business?); less of a fight to get a seat on the tube in the morning; and ridiculous recession-busting tips in the newspapers.

The home gym is my favorite so far: Why sign up to a costly health club when you can use your garden and substitute sandbags for weights?, asked the (clearly barmy) writer. Because I don’t have a garden or sandbags is why. And because the cute receptionist at my gym smiles at me, sometimes…