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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)…
Recession Briefing: Why Yellow Lights Are Shorter
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Some cash-strapped cities have been shortening yellow lights in order to nab more drivers with tickets — and raise revenue. (AlterNet)
A little-noticed effect of the recession is the incredible shrinking work shift. Millions of workers are taking multiple part-time or freelance jobs, jumping back and forth repeatedly between work, other pursuits and more work. These weird schedules are creating new challenges. (Wall Street Journal)
In an era of populist outrage and nearly double-digit unemployment, the average Wall Street bonus jumped 25% in 2009 to $123,850 as financial firms rebounded from the recession with help from U.S. taxpayers’ money. (USA Today)…
Recession Briefing: Relationship Rockiness
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Money doesn’t buy love and it doesn’t buy happiness, as we should all know by now. But money woes can certainly cause problems for couples, especially during the economic downturn. The bottom line: It’s complicated. (New York Times/City Room)
The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come. (The Atlantic)
Finding a job got much tougher last year, as the number of available openings fell by nearly one quarter. At the same time, the unemployed population soared by more than one-third, leaving more laid-off workers competing for fewer jobs. (Associated Press)…
Recession Briefing: Some Construction Unemployment at 30 Percent
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
No industry has taken it more on the chin than construction. Nationally, unemployment fell to 9.7% in January, but in construction it jumped to 24.7% from 18.7% in October. In many regions, union officials report 30% of their members are unemployed or “riding the bench.” (Time)
For the first time in recorded history, women outnumber men on the nation’s payrolls. This benchmark is bittersweet, as it comes largely at men’s expense — because men have been losing their jobs faster than women. (New York Times)
More prosperous American shoppers seem to be defying continuing high unemployment levels and economic uncertainty to renew their spending on luxuries such as jewelery, fashion and cosmetics. (Financial Times)…
Recession Briefing: Did Wall Street Really Cause the Crisis?
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Satisfying as it can be to stick it to the Wall Street, and especially the traders on Wall Street who are the most avid consumers of $500 bottles of champagne, as a response to the financial crisis, they aren’t really the ones who caused it, writes Mark Gimein. (The Big Money)
Unemployment rates rose in 43 states last month, the government said Friday, painting a bleak picture of the job market and illustrating nationwide data released two weeks ago. (Associated Press)
If the revival of Depression-era drinks has begun to hit a little too close to home — not to mention the wallet — take heart. High-end cocktail bars, ones that ordinarily serve 1930s favorites like Ramos Gin Fizzes and Singapore Slings for as much as $18, are offering drink deals that speak to contemporary economic concerns. (Liquor.com)…
Recession Briefing: Wall Street Bigwigs Get Grilled
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Comparing Wall Street titans to shady car salesmen, a committee investigating the financial crisis grilled the nation’s top bankers Wednesday in the latest example of Washington’s smoldering anger at an industry many there feel hasn’t atoned for its role in the slump. (Wall Street Journal)
President Obama plans to call on Thursday for taxing about 50 big banks and major financial institutions for at least the next decade to recoup all taxpayer losses from the bailout of Wall Street. (New York Times)
The last time the nation’s debt was this big compared with gross domestic product — 70.4% of GDP — was immediately following World War II. How did the Greatest Generation pare it down? It didn’t. It grew the economy faster than the debt, pushing down the debt-to-GDP ratio and making debt payments easier to manage. (USA Today)…
Recession Briefing 12.30: Workers Abandoning Vacation Days
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
The rough economy has claimed another victim: employee vacations. Two-thirds of American workers failed to use all of their vacation days this year, according to a survey released Tuesday. (New York Daily News)
Though single women account for only 46.5 percent of the female labor force, six in 10 are now jobless. 59 percent of adults in poverty are women, according to the latest Census report, which found an extraordinary discrepancy between the poverty rates of single women (20.8 percent) compared with married ones (6.2 percent). (The Big Money)
Nearly one in three metro areas have started to recover, but virtually none of the nation’s biggest cities. One likely reason is that the nascent economic recovery started in the nation’s midsection, from south to north, a part of the country that has relatively few big cities. (MSNBC)…
Recession Briefing 12.29: Goldman Sucks
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Some of the more tangible expressions of populist rage at Wall Street and Washington over the financial crisis are on t-shirts and other collectibles. Angry, snarky designs came fast and furious in 2009, going after Goldman Sachs , the financial industry bailout, President Obama’s economic policies, and many more. (Business Insider)
Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of giant bond manager Pimco, says that we shouldn’t trust the nascent economic recovery. “We’re on a sugar high,” El-Erian says. “It feels good for a while but is unsustainable.” (Associated Press)
It was a rough year for Ponzi schemes. In 2009, the recession unraveled nearly four times as many of the investment scams as fell apart in 2008. (Associated Press)…
Recession Briefing 12.28: Downturn Upends Courts
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
New York State’s courts are closing the year with 4.7 million cases — the highest tally ever — and new statistics suggest that courtrooms are now seeing the delayed result of the country’s economic collapse. (New York Times)
After a year of observing their parents pinch pennies and fret about the economy, the nation’s teenagers may be coming to grips with reality. Sales are down sharply in recent months at nearly every major retail chain catering to teenagers, and interviews with teenagers suggest that the reasons go beyond their own difficulty finding part-time jobs. (New York Times)
Economist Paul Krugman said on Sunday that there’s a “reasonably high chance” the economy will contract in the second half of next year. (ABC via Huffington Post)…
Recession Briefing 12.22: No Time for Crime
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
High unemployment. More people needing government vouchers for food. Fewer owning their homes. Yet for all the signs of recession, something is missing: More crime. (Associated Press)
The recession’s jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks. (Washington Post)
A growing number of community banks that got federal bailouts are failing to pay quarterly dividends they owe to the government, including two banks that got aid after congressional intervention on their behalf. (Washington Post)…
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