News

Recession Briefing 12.14: Free Haircuts Go Uptown

“Unemployment haircuts” have become a weekly fixture at Cora’s studio for those lucky, or unlucky, enough to qualify. All it takes is an appointment and some proof — be it a pink slip or unemployment check — to join the growing list of job-hunters hoping for a spot each Tuesday. (LA Times)

Based on data from Stimulus Watch, we find that of the jobs the administration claims to have created with stimulus funds, only some 140,765 of them were private jobs. (Reason)

Retail sales jumped 1.3% in November, according to the Commerce Department, well more than the expected increase. (CNNMoney)

Asked what the Obama administration would be doing to create jobs, Mr. Summers said, “Every bill is going to be a jobs bill.” (New York Times)

The wishes of Luis and thousands of other children around the Bay Area, though, are in jeopardy because of a severe shortage of toys collected by charities for the poor. (SF Gate)

The “good news” is that the Great Recession is forcing companies to take advantage of the Great Inflection faster than ever, making them more innovative. The bad news is that credit markets and bank lending are still constricted. (New York Times)

“They’re still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks. Well, let’s see,” [Obama] said. “You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it’s gone through in — in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we’ve got 10% unemployment.” (WSJ)

Governments and households are in denial about how the world has changed post-crisis. Wall Street is in a worse state than prior to the crisis because now the government backstop is explicit, and because the remaining players now have a bigger oligopoly than before. (Business Insider)

The 71-year-old Mr. Madoff also is salvaging something that disappeared in the outside world the moment his fraud was exposed: respect. “To every con artist, he is the godfather, the don,” says an inmate interviewed earlier this week. (WSJ)

So overused is the word ["bubble"] that its greatest adherents have devalued it altogether. No longer a descriptive noun, “bubble” has become the default term for lazy writers seeking to explain what they cannot. (Forbes)

Statistics show that couples in Nevada are not having as many babies as they did before the state sank into its worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. (SJ Mercury News)