depression
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The New Debt Collectors
While many of us would sooner forget the past year or so, a few history buffs out there have started hunting for recession souvenirs. A top prize among this group are the IOUs issued by California’s cash-strapped Gubernator Arnold Schwarzenegger last week.
Like Depression-era stock certificates, which were worthless in their day and could now fetch a bundle on Antiques Road Show, these collectors are hoping the state warrants issued in lieu of checks will someday have real value — if only sentimental.
“I figure it would be an interesting thing to have around when my grandchildren are fighting over my stuff after I’m dead and gone,” one poster wrote in a recent Craigslist ad offering twice the face value for a California IOU, up to $100…
Recession Briefing: 6.29
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Just as many children of the Great Depression learned to hoard money in their houses, today’s children will develop financial habits based on what they learn from parents coping with the recession. (Chicago Tribune)
With nearly one of 10 U.S. workers unable to land a job in the current economic conditions, some unemployed cubicle warriors with sudden free time are succumbing to wanderlust. (USA Today)
The recession is causing some unhappy couples to rethink their marital situation, since a costly divorce would only further deplete already-shrunken assets. (Wall Street Journal)
Harvard Economic Historian Says, ‘We’re in a depression’
Two big-time economic thinkers duked it out in a debate about the causes of the Recession Tuesday night. The event was sponsored by The Aspen Institute and Roosevelt House, Hunter College’s Public Policy Institute. Jeff Madrick, a Senior Fellow at the New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, faced Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Moderator Brian Lehrer, host of the Brian Lehrer Show, asked tough questions about the economic crisis.
After the debate, attendees had the chance to ask questions of their own. One audience member asked when the Recession would be over. For the first time during the evening, the two men largely agreed.
Ferguson took the question first. “We’re not in a recession,” he said. “We’re in a depression. I would say it’s a slight depression, rather than a Great Depression, but we’re looking at five years of subprime growth.”…
Redux: Digging the Downturn
Looking back to the Great Depression to see the path ahead.
Can we garden our troubles away?
During the Great Depression, people turned back to the land, growing vegetables in small suburban yards and vacant city lots. These subsistence patches were dubbed “depression gardens” and helped feed the nation during hungry times. People ate what they picked from their gardens, bartered their produce at stores for luxury goods like coffee, and traded regularly with neighbors. Folks reminiscing about those difficult times recall how much food could be coaxed from a few hundred yards…
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