Working Life

   To return to my theme of "numbers are a bitch"…here is one to chew on: $1.3 trillion. It’s a gap–a BIG gap…and in that number is part of the story of the crisis we’re in.   At this point, after checking in with my colleague and friend Dean Baker, the Gross Domestic Product is […]

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   Conventional wisdom–along with a great dose of greed and blind faith in a failed economic model–caused the immediate economic crisis we are still deeply mired in. Every day, brings another does of conventional wisdom. Here is one from The Wall Street Journal: U.S. household wealth fell by $14 trillion during the recession, sapping confidence […]

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   If anyone–like obstructionist Republicans–had any doubt that we have no time to waste on the stimulus, we are peering over the edge of the abyss: Furloughs, wage reductions, hiring freezes and shorter hours simply did not do enough. A year into this recession, companies across the board are resorting to mass job cuts. Home […]

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   Readers here know that I’ve been repeatedly saying things will get much worse, regardless of any one-day swings in the stock market. I’ve been saying for many, many weeks that we are going to see very big problems come the holiday season–the more important time for retailers and other businesses to bring in sales. […]

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   Yesterday, I said this about what to expect in the near future: One or two or more big retailers go belly up. No one is going to be spending money this holiday season. You know the problem is acute when you read, as I did yesterday in the Financial Times, that Las Vegas is […]

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   The wild swings in the markets around the world are just the most obvious symptom of an economy heading down. You probably know by now that credit is frozen–so businesses can’t borrow to pay off normal bills. Banks are just unwillining to hand out money when they have no idea what the underlying value […]

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