Working Life

   Readers here know that I have urged us, for a long time, to be quite careful about the talk of "recovery". I do not put much faith in a rising Dow since that is, in my opinion, mainly a game of a bunch of traders trying to jump in and out of short-term profit-taking. […]

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Today brings in stark relief the economic chasm in America: the Depression is here, if you measure what real people are going through, but, on Wall Street, the party continues as, in Marie Antoinette style, financial executives reap millions while the rest of the people grasp for crumbs.   Today, David Leonhardt has an excellent […]

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   If you are relying on the media or politicians to tell you when the "recession" will be over, you have a right to feel confused. One day it’s a story or pronouncement about the "green shoots" sprouting up in the economy, only to have those "green shoots" trampled the next day by gloom-and-doom over […]

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   When do things get better? That is all in the eye of the beholder.  The issue is: what and who defines "better"? For example, there is no doubt there are more hotel rooms open in the city. But, does that mean because all of a sudden the industry isn’t making money hand-over-fist that the […]

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   The Wall Street Journal has a story today looking at what a modern depression would look like. The story asserts: There is no consensus definition for "depression." Harvard University economist Robert Barro defines it as a decline in per-person economic output or consumption of more than 10%, and puts the odds of a depression […]

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   Well, duh. We needed a group of economists to tell us what we already know and felt for a long time. And you have to wonder: were they asleep since it took them until now to tell us that, by their reckoning, the recession began a year ago. From the Financial Times: Evidence of […]

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   I’m going to assume that most of you are still in one state or another of digesting the massive amounts of food you inhaled yesterday. Speaking of digesting, it looks The Treasury can’t swallow the $700 billion bankers’ bailout, or so The Wall Street Journal says this morning: The current Treasury has so far […]

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   Yours truly is hitting the road early and so will be out of reach for the morning of all the websites and news…good thing…because when the market opens at 9, all hell is going to break loose. I’m not sure how many people on Main Street understand the deep panic underway among the financial […]

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   Other people are feeling the pain, so says The Wall Street Journal: The global economy — which had long remained resilient despite U.S. weakness — is now slowing significantly, with Europe offering the latest evidence of trouble. On Thursday, the European Union’s statistics agency said gross domestic product in the euro zone contracted 0.2% […]

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   You want contrast? I’ve got a doozy for you this morning. Check out these two contrasting developments. First, no surprise, the economy isn’t growing…duh: The economy grew less than expected from April to June, the government said on Thursday, and it shrank in the final months of 2007, dimming the outlook for a quick […]

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