Recession Briefing: Museums Benefit from Downturn (Sort Of)

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

Many museums across the country saw a spike in visitors during the economic slump last year, even as they experienced increasing financial stress, according to results of a study released Thursday. (Associated Press)

One thing employment-services firm Manpower has got better at during the recession is figuring out quickly which job-hunters can be helped, and which to send elsewhere rather than risk leading them on. (Economist)

It cost more than $500,000 in stimulus funds to create a single highway construction job, largely because of building materials, an analysis of stimulus reports shows. Education aid and research funding are among the cheapest ways of creating or saving jobs at less than $60,000 each, the analysis shows.( USA Today)…

Recession Briefing: Flying the Private Skies Again

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

Gingerly, some business travelers are venturing back into private aircraft after the battered economy — and a public outcry against that perk of fat cats, the corporate jet — walloped the general aviation industry starting in 2008. (New York Times)

The longest and deepest U.S. economic slump in seven decades has been dubbed the “Great Recession” by the Associated Press. The AP Stylebook Online notified subscribers this month it had added the term as a reference for the downturn that began in December 2007. (Bloomberg)

Nearly 20 percent of the U.S. workforce lacked adequate employment in January and struggled to make ends meet with reduced resources and bleak job prospects, according to a Gallup poll released on Tuesday. (Reuters)…

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)…

Recession Briefing: Obama Proposes Big Limits on Banks

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

President Obama expanded his new offensive on Wall Street on Thursday, proposing rules that would impede the growth of the largest banks and bar them from making what he called “reckless” investments. (Washington Post)

As a result of the recession, the U.S. Census Bureau finds itself with the most highly skilled, highly educated work force in its 220-year history. Nationwide, the bureau already has recruited engineers, former corporate vice presidents, college professors and radio disc jockeys to help manage the 2010 census, which will attempt to count everyone in the country beginning in March. (Coloradoan)

“Britain has eaten, drunk and smoked its way out of the recession” according to a new report on manufacturing production. (The Times of London)…

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)…

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…

The Recession Will End… Uh, Sure It Will

We were really disheartened by some of the data in today’s Recession Briefing:

* 23% of homeowners’ properties are underwater
* 13% of parents of adults say one or more of their grown children have moved back in
* 34.5% of black males between the ages of 16 and 24 are unemployed: these are Great Depression proportions, folks
* 17.5% of people are unemployed, according to U-6 data, which includes discouraged and part-time workers who are looking
* The Small Business Administration has run out of money to back loans issued to small businesses.
* 33,000 people were laid off from from a single employer, the postal service in Russia

Things aren’t great, and maybe even scary. In an interview with CNBC.com, one economist suggested that, “Unless you create another bubble in which the economy can create jobs, then you’re not going to have growth. That’s the sad truth.” As such, Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors, added that he expects more of an L-shaped recovery—prolonged pain with no sudden rebound…

Recession Briefing 11.24: Even More Homes Underwater

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

The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery. (Wall Street Journal)

A major new survey of American artists and how they are weathering the economic downturn has found that slightly more than half experienced a drop in income from 2008 to 2009, a blow to an already struggling group, two thirds of whose members reported that they earned less than $40,000 last year. (New York Times)

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center finds that 13% of parents with grown children say one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year. Social scientists call them “boomerangers” — young adults who move in with parents after living away from home. This recession has produced a bumper crop. (Pew Research Center)…

Bailouts Are for Bullies

Asked why the federal government refuses to bailout CIT, a major small-business lender on the brink of bankruptcy, a Treasury Department flack told MSNBC last week that “even during periods of financial stress, we believe that there is a very high threshold for exceptional government assistance to individual companies.”

That didn’t prevent perennial overachievers like Bank of America, American Express, AIG, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, GM, Bank of New York Mellon, U.S. Bancorp, Northern Trust — wait, there’s still more — State Street, BB&T, and Capital One Financial from collectively receiving hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars last fall.

What gives? The Obama Administration keeps touting small business as the engine of private-sector job growth so crucial to the nation’s economic recovery. CIT — which received $2.3 billion in TARP funds in December — has a million clients with some $6 billion in credit lines, all for small and midsize businesses that are now tapping these funds for every penny. Maybe that’s peanuts compared to the $600 billion fall of the Lehman Brothers, which federal officials now openly regret not saving from bankruptcy — economists estimate the collapse cost the nation as many as two million jobs. That’s a lot of jobs, but nothing compared to the 120 million Americans who …

Recession Briefing 6.26

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

U.S. limousine companies are laying off workers and closing offices as the recession cuts into demand for the shiny black symbols of wealth and power. (Reuters)

The income of Americans soared in May because of the government’s economic stimulus, leading them to increase spending modestly and boost the saving rate to the highest in 15 years. (Wall Street Journal)

Over the next three months, more than 3,200 post offices and retail outlets — out of 34,000 — will be reviewed for possible closure or consolidation. (The Big Money)

According to a study, the economic downturn is making Britons mean, with people ignoring friends’ birthdays and refusing to buy rounds of drinks in the pub. (WalesOnline)

Initial claims for jobless benefits clicked higher once again this week, but amidst that grim news there are hopeful signs that the employment picture may soon improve. (TIME)…