Love in the Time of Layoff: Unemployment Jacked Up My Libido

Up until recently, if anyone had bothered to ask about my sex drive (which they never did), I would have said it was normal. I enjoyed sex as much as the next woman. But like many urban professionals, I was often too busy thinking about, say, the implications of some new regulation to give much thought to the sexual impulses that spiraled through my brain each day like dust motes.

Now that I have traded in my dry-cleaned, button-down, inoffensively colored work shirts for a set of neon green pajamas, the dust is gathering attention.

If I’m any example, unemployed girls do it better–or at least they want to do it more. Layoff has sent my libido to frenzied new heights…

Downturnaround Deals: Liz Claiborne, ShopGoldyn, Piperlime, Teleflora, Abe’s of Maine, Old Navy

Every week, we post a handful of online deals hand-picked for Recessionwire readers by the nice people over at Savings.com. Feel free to pass them along to your friends. And if there’s something you’d like to see, let us know!

Click here to get $50 off $150 or more from Liz Claiborne
See more Liz Claiborne coupons…

Recession Briefing 9.17: Grocers Feeling the Pinch

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

Supermarket prices are plunging as the global downturn drives down the cost of staples such as wheat, corn and milk and grocers fight for the wallets of penny-pinching consumers. (Washington Post)

In the economic downturn, teenagers around the world have focused their spending cuts on clothes, games and food, according to a survey by a social networking site. (Reuters)

A Wells Fargo employee is now out of a job after spending the summer partying in a foreclosed mansion in Malibu. (Washington Post/EconomyWatch)…

Screwed: 52,000 in Michigan

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

Today’s Total: 53,563

The state of Michigan anticipates the layoffs of 52,000 employees by October 1… French aerospace company Latecoere will lay off 1,000 employees by the end of the year… ConAgra will lay off 300 workers from its plant in Garner, N.C. after a June 9 explosion… Mercedez-Benz will reduce its workforce at a plant in Alabama by 200 by the end of the year… Mother’s Cookies has laid off 77 workers from its bakery in Louisville, Ky… Play Systems laid off 60 workers this week from two factories in South Dakota…

Eating for Free

Restaurant owners certainly aren’t having a good year. From widespread job loss to lingering worries about the country’s economic future, record numbers of families have begun cooking at home rather than spending money eating out—leading to a 14 percent drop in business at fine-dining restaurants so far in 2009.

For customers still going out on a regular basis, however, the dining scene has never looked better.

That’s because many restaurants are finding that coupons and discounted specials just aren’t enough anymore. Instead, they’re being forced to go the extra mile and get creative—letting kids eat free, giving away discounted tickets to movies, and even throwing in complimentary cocktails and wine…

Discounts for Students, Past and Present

Maybe it’s been years since the last time you sat in the back row of Econ 101. But if you’ve still got that old student ID card tucked away in a drawer somewhere, then today’s your lucky day.

That’s because college co-eds aren’t the only ones taking advantage of student discounts anymore. With money getting tight in households across the country, an increasing number of budget-conscious parents are unabashedly asking for student discounts on purchases made for their children, while more and more recent grads are holding on tight to college ID cards that haven’t expired and using them to score freebies and discounts well into their twenties and beyond…

Recession Briefing 9.16: Gardening Won’t Solve Everything

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

“The idea that gardening is going to solve household budget woes plus the obesity epidemic, to boot, is a bunch of fertilizer,” writes Martha White. (The Big Money)

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Tuesday that it was “very likely” that the recession had ended although he cautioned that it could be months before unemployment rates dropped significantly. (New York Times)

The downturn in high-end fashion is hitting celebrity-backed brands hard. Many are disappearing. (Wall Street Journal)…

Screwed: Possible 1,000 in LA

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

Today’s Total: 1,287

Los Angeles City Council is voting on a retirement plan today that may result in 1,000 layoffs… Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is proposing to layoff 176 Denver city workers… Corinth Timber Products Company has laid off 23 workers… BusinessWeek is proposing a 20 percent downsize, which if carried out will layoff approximately 85 employees from various departments… Nortel Networks has decided to sell its Enterprise Solutions business to Avaya, losing an estimated 25 percent of employees in the process… Oak Park Village laid off three more employees last week…

Lasting Lessons from the Recession

We’ve all gotten schooled in some way by the recession. Maybe it was a shock to learn that she loved your money more than she loved you. Perhaps the interest-only mortgage wasn’t as great a deal as it seemed. Or it might have been a good idea to have some money in the bank, in case your job evaporated.

It’s been a hard education for some of us. But once we have new homes or new jobs, and our financial situations are back on track, will we remember what welearned? Here are five lessons we hope will outlast the recession, the recovery and beyond:

1. Bad things can happen to good careers. A lot of talented, experienced, hard-working people lost jobs in this recession. (And some of them, we hope, are getting hired again.) The question is not why you, but what’s next?

2. You can live on less than you think…

The Recession Will End … When Trust is Restored in the Financial Industry

Says who: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon

“No discussion of the future of the financial system can be complete without an acknowledgment of the industry’s responsibility to re-earn the trust of the American people. How do we earn trust back? First, company leadership must foster a culture within their institutions that focuses on integrity, strong execution, quality products, long-term value creation, and doing the right thing. Rewards have to track real, sustained, risk-adjusted performance. Golden parachutes, special contracts, and unreasonable perks must disappear. There must be a relentless focus on risk management that starts at the top of the organization and permeates down to the entire firm. This should be business-as-usual, but at too many places, it wasn’t.” (via WSJ)

Why it might be false: Restoring trust in an industry that brought down the global economy will probably be so tough that we’ll see growth in other key sectors of the economy before there’s actual, real trust here…