Recession Briefing: Bonuses are Back

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

Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive Lloyd Blankfein a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts. (Times of London)

Professional sports teams, concert venues and opera houses may all be seeing drops in attendance as a result of the recession, but suburban community colleges are having the opposite problem. They’re running out of room. (Chicago Daily Herald)

California wine shipments fell in 2009 for the first time in 16 years as purchases in the U.K., the biggest export market, plunged during the global recession. (Bloomberg)…

Recession Briefing: Big Boost for GDP

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

The U.S. economy grew at the fastest pace in more than six years during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to a government report Friday. The nation’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, rose at a 5.7% annual rate in the fourth quarter. (CNN/Money)

Shoppers are taking haggling to new heights in the recession. A recent study found that 66 percent of American consumers had haggled at least once in the preceding six months, with an 88 percent ka-ching rate on gadgets, clothes, furniture and steak. (Washington Post)

Ben Bernanke won the backing of the Senate for a second four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve by a comfortable margin Thursday. Even with that storm behind him, Mr. Bernanke faces formidable political and economic challenges. (Wall Street Journal)

Recession Briefing: Paulson Defends AIG Rescue

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

In last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama promised to focus intently on the issue of most immediate concern to the nation: jobs. Obama sought to restore public confidence in his administration and to persuade Americans that he is directing his attention more fully to the economy. (New York Times)

Hit by the recession, Mexican migrants sent home 15.7% less in remittances last year, a record drop, the country’s central bank reports. Although it marked the second straight yearly decline — and the second drop since tracking began in 1996 — migrants still sent home big bucks: about $21.2 billion. (USA Today/On Deadline)

College and university endowments in the United States and Canada collectively lost $93 billion during the 2009 fiscal year, according to a study jointly released Thursday. The average institution lost 18.7% after fees. (Forbes)…

Recession Briefing: Economist Blames Foreigners for Financial Meltdown

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

NBC’s late night fiasco has become the perfect allegory for the Great Recession. And just as with the financial meltdown, it looks like this fiasco will end with the same corporate screw-ups still in their jobs, no real change, and everything back to more or less where it was when the whole thing started. (New York/Daily Intel)

Bank robberies plunged nearly 20% last year to their lowest point in at least a decade even as Americans grappled with a deep recession and widespread unemployment. (USA Today)

Much of the fault of the financial crisis has been heaped on Wall Streeters, unscrupulous mortgage lenders and weak regulators. But in a new research paper, economist Ricardo Caballero says there is another major group of contributors to America’s monetary mess who are not getting the blame they deserve: foreigners. (Time)…

Recession Briefing: C.E.O.’s Start Apologizing

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

Since the job market’s peak in June 2007, there are approximately 50 percent fewer job openings for the 15.3 million U.S. citizens who are officially unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Huffington Post)

As America recovers from the recession, some of the nation’s chief executives are offering that rarest of statements — an apology. But often, their words are so carefully parsed, scrubbed by lawyers or picked over by public relations professionals that it is unclear just how much mea is in their culpa. (New York Times)

The $787 billion economic stimulus package was responsible for keeping between 1.5 million and two million jobs in the economy through the end of 2009, White House economists said Tuesday. (Wall Street Journal)…

One Quick Look Back at a Tough Year

Did you ever think you’d talk so much about “sub-prime” and “stimulus”? Learn so many new, made-up terms, from “funemployment” to “collateralized debt obligations”? No doubt about it, 2009 was The Year of the Recession.

We dropped into the technical range for “recession” in December 2007, but it took months for all of the pieces to fall. In September 2008, Wall Street came to a standstill, and by the new year, it was still recovering. Layoffs spread through every sector of the economy at a rapid pace. For the first time since the Depression, no one no matter how rich or established was immune to the creeping clutch of joblessness, portfolio deflation, or even homelessness.

The headlines in our daily Recession Briefing, along with the personal experiences tracked on Recessionwire, revealed a new world en recession:…

Even though we dropped into the technical range for “recession” in December 2007, it took months for all of the pieces to fall. In September 2008, Wall Street came to a standstill, and by the new year, it was still recovering and layoffs were spreading through every sector of the economy at a rapid pace. For the first time since the Depression, no one no matter how rich or established was immune to the creeping clutch of joblessness, portfolio deflation, or even homelessness.

The headlines in our daily Recession Briefing, along with the personal experiences tracked on Recessionwire, revealed a new world en recession:…

Recession Briefing 12.21: Happy Holidays! No Foreclosures

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

Mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are suspending foreclosures and evictions for about two weeks in a temporary break for borrowers during the holiday season. (Associated Press)

In nearly 200 years of recorded stock-market history, no calendar decade has seen such a dismal performance as the 2000s. Investors would have been better off investing in pretty much anything else, from bonds to gold or even just stuffing money under a mattress. (Wall Street Journal)

The recession has accentuated what was already a growing home-energy challenge for low-income and many middle-class households across the nation. Rising numbers have had their utilities shut off, causing desperate scrambles to pay arrears and penalties to get them restored. (New York Times)…

Recession Briefing 12.18: Christmas Wallets Opening Up

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

The average amount of money Americans predict they will spend on Christmas gifts this season is now $743, up from last month’s estimate and a healthy increase over Americans’ Christmas spending forecast at this time a year ago. (Gallup)

Are you wondering why you’re not getting as many holiday cards this year? The U.S. Postal Service says there was an 11% decline in cancellations of first-class cards and letters from Dec. 1-13 — when most Americans mail holiday cards — compared to 2008. (USA Today)

About 1.7 million homeowners were on the verge of foreclosure in the fall, a looming “shadow inventory” of homes that will be put up for sale in the coming years and weigh down prices, a report said. (Associated Press)…

Recession Briefing 12.16: Sad Santas at the Mall

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

The recession is bumming out mall Santas as many children are asking for essentials such as clothing and jobs for their moms and dads rather than the usual toys and games. (Wassau Herald)

Many of the lasting scars of the recession of 2008-09 are clearly understood. The world’s economic output will be persistently lower, the balance of economic power has shifted towards emerging economies, and governments face years of repair work on their budgets. But the social scars are potentially deeper, longer-lasting and harder to quantify. (Financial Times)

A 2% mortgage? A growing number of homeowners are getting dream workouts on their mortgages, and nearly 80% of all loan modifications resulted in lower payments in the second quarter. (CNN/Money)…

The Recession Will End… When Obama Tames the “Fat Cat” Bankers

“I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” (via 60 Minutes)

Well, it looks like the recession is back on. Despite comments over the weekend from Larry Summers who said that “everybody agrees that the recession is over,” there’s still that niggling problem of 10 percent unemployment. And outsized bonuses on Wall Street, which only create a further disparity between the rich and everyone else. Populist rage over the bonuses and Obama’s claim that he gives his record so far a “solid b-plus” are a sign that people are mad, and not ready to call an end to the tough times—because they’re still experiencing them…