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By Janny Scott
$16.04
$18
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By Eugene Robinson — Our nation’s capital will survive the financial meltdown, the deepening recession and the plethora of foreign crises from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Whether Washington will survive Tuesday’s inauguration, however, is an open question.
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Flickr / jphilipg
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There will be negotiation, revision and capitulation, but the basic guts of the Democrats’ $825 billion stimulus package are out in the open. There’s billions for infrastructure, billions for schools and billions for you and me. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) responded by saying “Oh. My. God,” which we’ll take to mean, “Praise Jesus! The Democrats have done it again.”
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Flickr/respres
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We knew this news was bound to be bad, but we didn’t think it would be quite this grim: The number of American homeowners who faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008 passed the 2.3 million mark, an 81 percent increase over the previous year.
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Flickr / exfordy
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By Joe Conason — Would it be rude to ask whether the Republicans have any new proposals to save the country from this worsening recession? If not, they should halt their reactionary opposition to Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.
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AP photo / Rina Castelnuovo, pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — The president-elect has struggled to stay out of the Gaza fight, but based on everything he said during the campaign, he appears determined to stand up for Israel.
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By Joe Conason — As the government contemplates spending very large sums of money, it is reassuring to know that somebody still worries about waste. Or it would be reassuring, if only that somebody were not Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.
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In this series of weekly addresses posted on Change.gov before news of the Bill Richardson scandal broke, the president-elect makes an appeal for an economic recovery strategy that would ideally prevent further job losses and spark a turnaround in Americans’ prospects as soon as possible.
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msnbc.com
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Following in the footsteps of 2008’s dismal economic news, global manufacturing has fallen to low levels unseen for decades. In the U.S., factory activity has dropped to a 28-year low, marking a slump that further adds to the bad economic trends as we enter 2009.
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By David Sirota — If you’re like me, you sometimes find yourself speechless when confronted with abject insanity, such as conservatives’ newest talking point—the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.
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By David Sirota — For most of us, Benjamin Franklin’s words in 1789 still apply: “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” However, millionaires, by definition, are not most of us.
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connectedmichigan.com
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With American jobs being steadily peeled away, hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to seek unemployment benefits for the first time. The number of first-time claims rose 5.4 percent last week, to their highest level in more than a quarter-century.
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canada.com
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When the global economy takes a serious plunge (i.e., like right now), one would think that such frivolities as facial fillers and Botox would be the first to go from the regimens of even the most image-conscious among us.
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By Marie Cocco — I must admit that when the danger of a global financial implosion became apparent in March, I did not understand how all those worthless Wall Street credit swaps really could be the fault of an overpaid union welder at an auto plant somewhere in Michigan.
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By Eugene Robinson — Despite the popular myth, lemmings don’t really hurl themselves off a cliff to reduce their numbers. That sort of behavior is seen only among Republicans in the Senate, who gave us a demonstration when they torpedoed legislation to bail out the auto industry.
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Flickr / Ian Muttoo
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Japanese technology giant Sony Corp. announced Tuesday that it is planning to slash 8,000 jobs—or about 4 percent of its global work force— in response to the deepening international economic crisis.
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AP photo / Rick Bowmer
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By Bill Boyarsky — With unemployment soaring, the need grows daily for guaranteed health care. But that may not happen in the coming year because of the desperate need to revive the economy and put people to work.
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Barack Obama paid a visit to the Internet on Saturday with his weekly president-elect-themed YouTube address, sounding an urgent note about the economy, pointing to the dismal news about job losses in November and pointing out what his team plans to do about it.
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U.S. Department of Labor
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The news continues to get worse after the government finally put the “official” stamp on the current recession. The Labor Department has announced that 533,000 jobs were lost in November, the biggest monthly cut in 34 years—with analysts fearing that the 11-month trend of increasing job losses will deepen even further.
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There’s a revolution underway in Chinese culture as young women flock from villages to factory employment in the cities, leaving traditional values behind.
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By Marie Cocco — Over the past 10 months, as the hemorrhage of jobs began to push the national unemployment rate toward its October level of 6.5 percent, about 3 million Americans were thrown off the insurance rolls or had their incomes fall so much that they became eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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aolcdn.com
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With a bailout of the Big Three hovering over our political landscape, popular opinion has signaled a considerable voice against any federal support for the failing auto industry. A poll shows 61% of Americans oppose a bailout, believing any government assistance would be both unfair and ineffective in fixing the economy.
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cartype.com
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After a dismal November, Ford Motor Co. is hanging by a thread, but the automaker told Congress on Tuesday that it is in better shape than Chrysler and General Motors and could make it through its current economic crisis with a little help—to the tune of $9 billion in standby loans.
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whatpricejusticeblog.com
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While it’s great that it has finally been acknowledged, the National Bureau of Economic Research’s announcement on Monday that the U.S. is officially in a recession is old news—even by the bureau’s own estimation. Updated
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By Joe Conason — Barack Obama’s appointees will implement the Obama program, not only because that is what he tells them to do but because that is what they have come to believe is best for the country.
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By Marie Cocco — At the earliest, it is likely to be at least February or March before the first dollar of an Obama recovery plan is felt. This is a national disgrace.
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White House / Paul Morse (altered)
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By Eugene Robinson — Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that’s the situation we’ll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.
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Federal Reserve
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Ben Bernanke doesn’t really care if you call it a recession or, in his words, “a very serious slowdown in the economy.” Whatever it is, the chairman of the Federal Reserve thinks a new stimulus package is needed to get those terrified Americans dipping into their mattresses and buying things again.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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The Dow gained 401.35 points Thursday but had volatile swings through most of the day. Investors, The Wall Street Journal reports, are still trying to figure out what stage of suck the economy is in.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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It seems like only a couple of days ago that the Dow jumped 936 points. The market went back to freaking everyone out on Wednesday, with a sobering drop of 733.08 points. Stimuli and bailouts aside, it appears that we’re in for a substantial recession.
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group30.org
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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said Tuesday that the U.S. was already in a recession, despite the efforts of the U.S. government and other nations’ leaders to intervene. “I have seen a lot of crises but I have never seen anything quite like this one,” said Volcker, who headed up the Fed for eight years before Alan Greenspan took over in 1987.
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0-60mag.com
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Sure, we’ve all heard the stories about Wall Street bigwigs lining their pockets with gold dubloons while the rest of us scramble to save pennies, but The New York Times has drawn out that contrast in graphic detail with a handy series of charts showing the total earnings (including bonuses) of 12 top executives from 2003-2007.
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bls.gov
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A government report released Friday morning leaves little room for any defense of the failed policies of the Bush administration or any belief in the economic wisdom of John McCain, whose erroneous assertion that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” failed to mention a 6.1 percent unemployment rate, up nearly two percentage points since 2007.
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White House / Susan Sterner
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The House couldn’t swallow the $700-billion bailout proposal, so the Senate added about $100 billion of incentives—mostly in the form of tax cuts. The Senate will vote on the proposal tonight and the House could decide as early as Friday whether $700 billion is too much, but $800 billion is just about right.
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momocrats.typepad.com
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And now, this latest dispatch from the U.S. Department of Unintentional Irony: Sen. John McCain spoke out against the Federal Reserve’s recent bids to give life support (read: gigantic amounts of money) to failing financial institutions. Isn’t he the same guy who has looked to Phil Gramm for economic advice?
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By David Sirota — Barack Obama isn’t going to win any arguments about the economy if he keeps winking at the robber barons who helped wreck Wall Street.
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thespeeddemon.com
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George W. Bush and his father share more than a last name. Reports show that August’s unemployment rate increased past the level initially forecast, rising to 6.1 percent. But even more disturbing is the fact that the misery index—unemployment aggregated with inflation—also soared to its highest level since 1991, when George H.W. Bush was in office.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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Finally, some slightly better financial news has hit the wires after months of sobering reports: Oil prices dropped to a three-month low on Tuesday, which may be due to “the softening market,” as one analyst puts it in this NYT account, but whatever the reason it still means a slight reprieve from weeks of punishing prices. Stock markets had their biggest gains in four months.
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flickr.com
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A government report released Friday signals worsening economic tides as the U.S. tries to navigate through its highest level of unemployment in four years. The seven-month-long trend of net job losses is likely to persist, with few signs of a turnaround on the horizon.
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Despite the massive federal stimulus package, national GDP only grew 1.9 percent from April to June, the Commerce Department has announced, and it actually shrank in the last quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, high gas prices, supposedly reflecting costs, spiked profits of oil companies, with Exxon recording its most profitable quarter ever. In fact, reports the NYT, “It was the highest quarterly profit ever for any American company, as Exxon made nearly $90,000 a minute.”
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Congress to the rescue! Mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being propped up in their time of dire need, thanks to a bill passed Saturday that will lift the world’s two largest financial institutions out of immediate danger and help some homeowners handle mortgage crises.
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Flickr / PetroleumJelliffe
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According to the most recent data from the IRS, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans took home a greater share of the nation’s income in 2006 than in any year of the previous 19. It’s possibly the biggest income disparity Americans have seen since the Great Depression. The average tax rate of the super-rich was at its lowest level in at least 18 years.
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AP photo / Lisa Poole
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The once-mighty U.S. dollar is full of hot air, or at least the rate of inflation is at a 26-year high due to the recent economic toils and astronomical energy prices. Prices U.S. consumers pay shot up 1.1 percent in June—or more directly, your paycheck just got 1.1 percent smaller.
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By Marie Cocco — Phil Gramm’s dismissal of America’s economic suffering has forced him to the political sidelines, but as one of the congressional architects of Republican economics, the mess he made will haunt Americans no matter who the next president is.
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Although certain Washington denizens from both sides of the aisle might have been thrown when the two government-backed mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hit the skids last week, several of their current and former colleagues had long seen the crisis coming.
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momocrats.typepad.com
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According to Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas who’s now a key economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, America’s economic woes, insofar as they actually exist, are the product of some stinking thinking by “a nation of whiners” and doom-and-gloom headlines from the U.S. media.
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chasingthecool.wordpress.com
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Fine, so the headline was a bit much, but this was one time we didn’t mind saying venti instead of large: Turns out that even the top bananas at Starbucks finally realized that they’ve overextended themselves, and due to the sagging economy, they’re closing 600 U.S. retail locations. Great—so that means there’ll be only eight Starbucks stores on every block instead of nine.
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broadcatching.wordpress.com
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Seems like everything is a crisis these days, what with the subprime mortgage crisis, the oil crisis and, perhaps most troubling of all, the climate change crisis. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledged the complexity and interconnectedness of these unsettling trends Tuesday, stopping short of declaring that a major recession is on the way but without ruling out a recession of lesser magnitude.
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By Marie Cocco — In 225 days, at least one high-ranking politician will become unemployed. How many will join President Bush in retirement?
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howstuffworks.com
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In what one economist has called the “strongest evidence yet” that the U.S. is in recession, the country’s jobless rate has grown 0.5% since April, the largest monthly jump in more than 20 years. The unemployment rate has been steadily rising this year, with 324,000 jobs lost since January.
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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