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Recession Briefing: Discount Strategists Shop for Free

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

Discount devotees have formed vast online communities that collectively unearth and swap digital, mobile-phone and paper coupons. The cleverest shoppers combine dozens of coupons and go from store to store buying items in quantity, getting stuff free of charge. (Wall Street Journal)

The recession and continuing high unemployment are taking a psychological toll on individuals. There’s been a startling increase in the number of calls to employee-assistance programs regarding violence, psychosis and dementia in the workplace, including calls about suicidal and homicidal threats, program directors say. (Wall Street Journal)

In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave. (New York Times)

White House adviser Paul Volcker said it’s too soon for U.S. policy makers to withdraw the stimulus measures and interest-rate cuts used to fight the worst slump since the Great Depression. (Bloomberg)

President Obama’s proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall. (Washington Post)

A growing number of businesses are converting temporary workers to permanent hires, heralding a warming job market. “It’s definitely on the rise,” says Rob Wilson, president of Employco Group, a Chicago-area staffing firm. (USA Today)

Couples are increasingly living apart as high unemployment and depressed housing values push them into less-than-favorable living and working arrangements. There’s even a name for the phenomenon: When job seekers are forced far from home, their stay-at-home spouses are sometimes called recession widows or widowers. (Columbus Dispatch)

Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report, while cheering stock investors, hasn’t taken the threat of a double-dip recession off the table. (CNBC)

A small but growing number of school districts across the country are moving to a four-day week, in a shift they hope will help close gaping budget holes and stave off teacher layoffs. (Wall Street Journal)

Nearly a year after the Obama administration announced a plan to help up to 1.5 million struggling homeowners modify their second mortgages, not a single homeowner has gotten any assistance. (Huffington Post)

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