Bank failure tally reaches 130

Regulators shutter Cleveland-based AmTrust Bank, and five other banks.

Closures will cost the FDIC $2.384 billion.

By Hibah Yousuf, CNNMoney.com staff reporter Last Updated: December 4, 2009: 7:22 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The nation’s tally of 2009 bank casualties hit 130 Friday when regulators shuttered a large Ohio bank, an Illinois bank, a Virginia bank and three small Georgia banks.
The largest bank to fail was AmTrust Bank in Cleveland.
Regulators also closed Benchmark Bank in Aurora, Ill., and Greater Atlantic Bank in Reston, Va. More

Black Male Unemployment Comparable to ‘Great Depression’

Says Economic Expert
by Pharoh Martin
NNPA National Correspondent
Originally posted 11/18/2009

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – While the nation is reeling over double-digit jobless rates showing up for the first time in decades, Black males are looking at numbers almost twice as worse.

Almost one in five Black men 20-years-old or older are without a job, according to figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month.

__________________________________________________________

OCTOBER 2009 UNEMPLOYMENT DATA*
(U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS)
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT: 10.2% [Analysis]

A year earlier, the number of unemployed persons was 10.2
million, and the jobless rate was 6.6 percent. [BLS]
White                                  9.5%
African American    15.7%
Hispanic                          13.1%
Asian**                               5%
Men 20 years and over         10.7%
Women 20 years and over    8.1%
Teen-agers (16-19 years)     27.6%
Black teens                                   41.3%

Officially unemployed    15.7 million

HIDDEN UNEMPLOYMENT
Working part-time because can’t find a full-time job:      9.3 million
People who want jobs but are not looking so are not counted in official statistics (of which about 2.4 million** searched for work during the prior 12 months and were available for work during the reference week.)      6.0 million
Total: 31.0 million (19.4% of the labor force)

Source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

**Not seasonally adjusted.
*See Uncommon Sense #4 for an explanation of the unemployment measures.
In addition, millions more were working full-time, year-round, yet earned
less than the official poverty level for a family of four. In 2008, the latest
year available, that number was 17.8 million, 17.1 percent of full-time, full-year workers (estimated from Current Population Survey, Bur. of the  Census, 2009).
In September, 2009, the latest month available, the number of job
openings was only 2.5 million, according to the BLS, Job Openings and
Labor Turnover Estimates, November 10, 2009.+ Thus there are more than 12 job-wanters for each available job.[Numbers are not comparable with previous months as methods have been revised.]

Updates: April 24, 2009

Homeless count rises
Organization is racing to meet deadlines to get federal stimulus funds for families.
By Jason Wells
Published: Last Updated Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:02 PM PDT

Boulder Police, City Address Issues of Homeless Population
TheDenverChannel.com – Denver,CO,USA
Police in Boulder are dealing with the challenge of crimes involving the
chronically homeless, at the same time city leaders are trying to figure
out what …

International Monetary Fund Says World Economy Will Shrink This Year
Voice of America – USA
A new report by the IMF estimates that the world economy will shrink by one
and three-tenths percent this year. That would be the worst performance in
more …

Economic outlook remains bleak as world leaders gather
USA Today – USA
As the world’s finance ministers and central bank chiefs descend on
Washington for this weekend’s annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank, …

Time running out on Chrysler
The embattled automaker has one week to reach deals with Fiat, unions and banks, raising doubts it can avoid bankruptcy and a shutdown.

By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: April 24, 2009: 6:13 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Chrysler LLC faces the most difficult, and important, week in its 84-year history as the automaker tries to close three difficult deals in order to avoid bankruptcy

Economy leveling off?

Despite problems, economy leveling off

By Jeannine Aversa AP economics writer
Friday, April 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — At last, after a nerve-racking six-month descent, the economy appears to be leveling off.

Great headline but I wouldn’t take my finger off the Panic Button just yet. Unemployment continues on a downward spiral despite Wells Fargo strong profits forecast and Dow Jones gain of 250 points. I think a lot of people are making a big mistake by not taking the economic conditions of the rest of the world into the equation. I am not at all convinced that the recession is anywhere near being over and I suspect it will get a lot worse. Its too early to declare victory against the recession. Without consumer confidence there will be no recovery and how can the consumers be confident if they see unemployment continue on a downward spiral.
You might want to read what Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. O’Rourke have to say in their article A Tale of Two Depressions. Here is an excerpt:

Often cited comparisons – which look only at the US – find that today’s crisis is milder than the Great Depression. In this column, two leading economic historians show that the world economy is now plummeting in a Great-Depression-like manner. Indeed, world industrial production, trade, and stock markets are diving faster now than during 1929-30. Fortunately, the policy response to date is much better.

Grapes of Wrath, a classic for today?

This is a very poignant article which deals directly with our times and serves as a warning.

The Grapes of Wrath, published exactly 70 years ago, can be seen as a prophetic novel – rooted in the tragedies of the Great Depression, but speaking directly to the harsh realities of 2009, writes Steinbeck scholar Robert DeMott.

Robert DeMott is Professor of American Literature at Ohio University and a former director of the Steinbeck Research Center at San Jose State University in California.

History Classes to Connect with The Depression

Some students make an interesting observation that I have noted here in the past:

But the students also noted that it was not the New Deal but World War II and war-related industry that ended the Depression. The lesson reinforced student Will Snow’s feelings about the stimulus package.

Very true indeed! It was a war that took us out of the depression something that people should bear in mind in these times. You can read the article below.

In history classes, students connect lessons from Depression to economy’s present

09:51 PM CDT on Sunday, April 12, 2009

By KATHY A. GOOLSBY / The Dallas Morning News

Making students feel connected to history is difficult, but North Texas teachers say today’s economy has students tuning in to lessons on the Great Depression like never before. They’ve seen numerous class members experience “aha” moments as they study 1930s bank collapses, unemployment figures and soup lines.

Protectionism On The Rise, Be Afraid!

Update: March28, 2009

Protesters, police go online in G-20 battle

By CNN’s Simon Hooper

LONDON, England (CNN) — Social networking Web sites are set to play a crucial role in protests ahead of next week’s G-20 meeting of world leaders in London as demonstration organizers and police use Twitter and Facebook as key sources of real-time information and intelligence.

Metropolitan Police leaders have warned that the city faces an “unprecedented” wave of protest in the run-up to Thursday’s summit talks on the state of the global economy and are set to deploy huge numbers of officers to maintain public order.
_________________________________________________________

March 27, 2009

As I have said on many occasions I am not an economist just a simple man on the street guided by intuition, common sense and history.
In the past couple of weeks I have been seeing a move by many countries that bodes ill for all. I speak of protectionism. Day by day more and more economist are beginning to sound the alarm and express concern of this latest trend away from free trade.

After they met in Washington last November, G20 leaders said that they had united to support open markets.
From The Economist print edition

Well, talk about a bunch of crap! It seems they did a lot of talk about open markets but no sooner the meeting was over they started measures towards protectionism. They should heed the lessons of history.

COMPARISONS to the Depression feature in almost every discussion of the global economic crisis. In world trade, such parallels are especially chilling. Trade declined alarmingly in the early 1930s as global demand imploded, prices collapsed and governments embarked on a destructive, protectionist spiral of higher tariffs and retaliation.
From The Economist print edition

Many economist are warning about this move towards protectionism but the question is will the G20 members heed their warnings?

UNLESS January was a strangely synchronised blip, trade is collapsing much more rapidly than people had realised before (see our Leader). The World Bank has very helpfully been putting together data for as many countries as release their data, and the January data look pretty scary indeed.
The Economist
As I have said I am not an economist but it would seem that more and more of them are taking my view of where this is all heading namely another Economic Depression and this one will more than likely be more devastating than the last. The G20 would do well to take the advice of the experts and beware of closing borders to free trade. History has shown that once that happens war is right around the corner!

Protectionism! Yes or No?

Our economy and that of the rest of the world might be in for a jolt if the G20 have their way.  Here is an excerpt from an article by Annys Shin in the Washington Post:

At their last meeting in November, the leaders of 20 industrialized and developing nations pledged to fight anti-trade policies. But a World Bank report released last week found that of the G20 members, 17 have failed to keep that promise, prompting calls by world leaders and others for the group to adopt a tougher stance this time.

Here are two points that should be considered by those countries before going down the protectionist path.

1. In the 1930s, the US adopted the protectionist Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act     which raised rates to all-time highs beyond the Lincoln levels , which some economists believe exacerbated the Great Depression.
2. Protectionism has also been accused of being one of the major causes of war. According to Frederic Bastiat, “When goods cannot cross borders, armies will.”

I think that many of the G20 members would benefit by re-examining Bastiat’s Economic Sophisms in particularly Bastiat’s theoretical railway between Spain and France. Even though he lived during the 1800’s his clarity is something that is much needed in our current world economic crisis.

“When goods cannot cross borders, armies will, ” is a prelude to what may come to be should the protectionist stance be incorporated by the G20 members. In thinking that they will protect their country’s goods they will in fact be hurting their country’s producers.

Source: Wikipedia: Protectionism / Frederic Bastiat

62% of homeless in Lehigh Valley region are families

These articles are getting to be almost common place now a days. A day does not pass by without some report as to the deteriorating condition of the homeless. The numbers just keep climbing as each states unemployment figures go up.
Here is an article from Lehigh, Pennsylvania .

Shelters are full and as jobs dry up, climbing out of homelessness gets harder

62% of homeless in Lehigh Valley region are families, survey finds.
By Scott Kraus | Of The Morning Call
March 23, 2009

For most of the Lehigh Valley’s homeless, hard times are nothing new.

But the agencies that aid them say the nation’s recession is adding more troubles by increasing competition for a shrinking pool of jobs.

Jobs are scarce and there are many applicants, said Carlos Javier Rivera, a single dad who lives with his 21-month-old son at New Bethany Ministries’ shelter in Bethlehem. Rivera, 34, who came to Bethlehem last year from Puerto Rico, became homeless in November when he was forced to move out of his sister’s home. He has had no luck finding a job.

World Bank report reveals booming protectionism

Well, here is another one that I was just waiting for. I figured they would go back on their word but I didn’t expect it to be so soon and so public. Guess what? The good old United States is included in the membership!!!

Mark Peart | Monday March 23 2009 – 07:57am

The G20 group of industrialised nations’ credibility is in tatters just five months after it pledged to end protectionism in response to the global financial crisis.
A just-released World Bank report has found that 17 members of the 20-member group have embarked on protectionist measures in one form or another since they signed a pledge on November 15 not to go down that path.