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Recession Briefing: White House Drops 5.1% in Value

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

Last year, real estate site Zillow estimated the White House was worth $308 million, based on the home’s physical attributes (132 rooms! 55,000 square feet!), historical value and housing performance in the local Washington, DC market. One recession year later, estimates put White House at a bit less: $292.5 million, a drop of $15.6 million, or 5.1 percent from last January. (Zillow Blog)

The recession hit this year’s college freshmen hard, affecting how they chose a school as well as their ability to pay for it, according to an annual nationwide survey released Thursday. Over all, students were more likely than previous freshmen to have a parent who was unemployed and less likely to have found a job that might help pay for college. (New York Times)

The lobbying industry demonstrated its resilience last year in the face of the recession and is fully expected to smash previous spending records. On Wednesday, lobbyists filed their fourth-quarter reports, offering the first glimpse at their spending totals for the year. (Huffington Post)

“There’s lots of handwringing at the moment about big government and the risks of politicians being too involved in the economy,” writes Jonathan Weber. “But the fact is that when it comes to the financial system, the government has always been firmly in the driver’s seat. And it should use that power to take Wall Street off its high horse while it has the chance.” (The Big Money)

The economies of many cities will begin to rebound in 2010, but a full recovery is far off, especially for the labor market, said a metro area outlook report released Wednesday. (CNN/Money)

The United Nations-led global drive to get every child into primary education risks being knocked off course by the global financial crisis, which is leaving a legacy of rising poverty and hunger in poor countries, the UN warned. (Guardian)

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance surged to a 2-month high last week, the government said Thursday. There were 482,000 initial job claims filed in the week ended Jan. 16, up 36,000 from a revised 446,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said in a weekly report. (CNN/Money)

Two of the nation’s largest banks said Wednesday that loan losses generally have stopped increasing but that relatively few customers are seeking new loans, reports that are in broad agreement with other indicators showing that the economy remains weak.  (Washington Post)

Personal finance guru Suze Orman talks about how the recession has affected women, and how stressed out Americans can rebound from last year’s financial disaster. (Time)

Even as banks report improved financial results for the fourth quarter of 2009, they continue to struggle to rid themselves of bad old loans and to make good new ones. Critics worry that big banks are bigger and potentially more destabilizing than ever and are using their access to low-cost capital to make risky trading bets on currencies, commodities, stocks and bonds instead of making traditional loans. (USA Today)

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Tags: college students, government, jobs, real estate, women