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Recession
Score one for frugality
No inaugural bash as usual for University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
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Keeping the recession from becoming a Depression
Mort Zuckerman suggests ways for avoid a “deep” recession. The article is from October 2008. I wonder what his views are now.
The inescapable bad news is that a serious recession is inevitable given the damage to the financial sector and the degree to which business and the public have been traumatized. But this does not [...]
A new virtue: Thrift
And not a moment too soon it seems.
“It’s huge,” said Martha Olney, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in the Great Depression, consumerism and indebtedness. The rapid reversal is even more remarkable, she said, because in recessions consumers usually save less money. Not this time. “It implies a re-emergence of [...]
Isn't not over until it's over
I’ve heard some whispers that we’ve hit the bottom or that things are getting better. This Economist article suggests that there are times when optimism isn’t a good thing. Robert Reich, too, thinks that we’re not at the bottom yet.
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A tragic side of the Recession
More stories like these are popping up. Sad. Terribly sad.
The man who killed his wife and three young children and then himself in a tiny town in northwest Maryland last week was at least $460,000 in debt and owned a Florida house that was in foreclosure, according to property records and police.
And then there’s the [...]
Richard Posner and the current "Depression"
Richard Posner, the jurist I most love to read and whom I wish was wrong more than I’m afraid he isn’t, recently made the admission in this Bloomberg podcast that, yep, it’s a “depression”. A review of his recent book in the A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ‘08 and the Descent into Depression, is [...]
Young Japanese headed back to the farm
I’m not sure we could (or should) copy this. Still, it is intriguing as a response to the economic decline across industries and countries. The New York Times reports that the young Japanese are heading back to the farm:
Started last month as part of Prime Minister Taro Aso’s stimulus plans, the program stems from growing [...]
Geithner sounding a somber note
Geithner’s cautionary announcement:
“Financial conditions in some markets have shown modest improvement,” Mr. Geithner said, adding that it would be “wrong to conclude that we are close to emerging from the darkness that descended on the global economy early last fall.”
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Migrant workers (of the world) going home(less)
This, too, was bound to happen. The jobs are disappearing, from the low pay, low skill jobs, to the higher paid, more skilled work. For those who want fewer “undocumented persons” in the US, this is good news. But one unintended consequence?
No longer able to find work, Hispanic day laborers have forged a hidden network [...]
Epistemology and our Depression
True, but I still think we (common folk) can gain a lot from examining how the prior generation dealt with tough, tough times. In an article from The American Enterprise Institute, Jerry Z. Muller suggests:
We should attend to what is new and especially problematic about the current downturn and why it may not respond to [...]
Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.
-- George S. Patton