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Recession Briefing: Highway Robbery on the Rise

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

Thieves are increasingly swiping tractor-trailers filled with goods, triggering a spike in cargo theft on the nation’s highways. (Wall Street Journal)

Nationally, 37 million people — about one in eight Americans — visited food pantries and soup kitchens in 2009, compared with 25 million in 2006, according to Feeding America, the national hunger-relief network that did the study. Officials say the numbers really began to skyrocket at the onset of the recession in late 2007. (Chicago Sun-Times)

President Obama’s proposals to tax and curb the activities of Wall Street have thrown an unpredictable element into the debate over financial regulatory reform. They also have touched off an intensive new round of lobbying and raised questions in Congress over whether his plan will add urgency or merely bog things down. (New York Times)

Last Friday’s lights-out GDP report has revived hopes among bulls that we might get a V-shaped recovery. But Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius says it’s not happening. (The Business Insider)

The share of borrowers who are falling seriously behind on loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration jumped by more than a third in the past year, foreshadowing a crush of foreclosures that could further buffet an agency vital to the housing market’s recovery. (Washington Post)

President Obama will roll out a proposed $30 billion small-business lending program today, the next in a series of administration efforts to jump-start hiring by the nation’s small businesses. (Wall Street Journal)

The worst pain of the economic downturn undoubtedly is being borne by the 6.1 million people who have been unemployed for more than six months. They make up nearly 40 percent of the 14.7 million people who were unemployed across the nation in December. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

“No matter how big of a drift toward populism it appears the country has taken, it is also clear that President Obama is losing ground with his agenda,” write Brian S. Wesbury and Robert Stein. “As a result, the odds of repeating anything like the Great Depression are low and falling by the day. It’s not the 1930s — it’s not even close.” (Forbes)

The new foreclosure plague is tied more to the economy than bad mortgages. Here are 10 cities where defaults grew the fastest in 2009. (CNN/Money)

In another sign of the nation’s uneven economic recovery, new data released Monday showed manufacturing activity at its highest level in more than five years while consumer demand continued to moderate. (Washington Post)

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Tags: jobs, mortgages, obama, real estate, recovery, Small Business, soup kitchens