Mornin’ Christy,

been loosely following the news on Food Stamps -knowing the numbers reflected hard times for so many families – but saw one this morning that really got my attention – 1 in 10 , that’s right 1 in 10 Americans are now using Food Stamps

probably in one of your links above, just haven’t clicked there yet – more coffee

I missed that this morning — will add it in though. Thanks for the heads up.

here is Reuters link via TPM

again, I knew the numbers were climbing monthly, but to see it in print as 1 in 10 was bracing

Good morning Christy, Cbl and all pups.

Thanks for the post, Christy.

All depends on where you live, too.

Michigan’s published unemployment rate is 12%.

But in reality, the number is closer to 19%, if you count underemployed and people who’ve simply given up looking.

2 in 10 here — that’s a depression, and we are far from done. I figure we are looking at 30%-plus in Michigan if one of the Big Three goes bankrupt.

You are most welcome. Thought we were due for a little news catch-up on economy bits and pieces…

corporate office space dumping

“Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler.”

I like to watch the squirrels…

mornin’ scooterboy, a bit nipply for that ride in. looking forward to seeing you later

btw, you don’t have enough flair.

Yeah. You know what, yeah, I do. I do want to express myself, okay. And I don’t need 37 pieces of flair to do it.

;)

Dang it, now I’m going to have to break out the Milton Remix. (YouTube)

Christy,

I posted some stats over at EW’s yesterday in terms of making the argument, again, for the need to save both GM and Chrysler.

Here you go. Some of the stats are of import, especially for the Plantation Caucus.

I totally understand the given up looking part. The time I interviewed for a lousy part time receptionist job and found out that 300 people had applied, I got super depressed.
This latest job interview for a job at a book store has better odds. At the second interview, the manager told me it was down to me and two other people. I called her this past Tuesday, because it’s been 3 weeks…and she said she hasn’t made her mind up yet. It’s not brain surgery, for crying out loud.

I want to add, that individuals who are on rolling furloughs can apply for unemployment as well. They qualify once furloughs go into a second week w/o pay.

So, in some ways, there are the “underemployed” and the other “underemployed-employed”.

We need to keep repeating the words Bush Recession. Bush caused it Obama is trying to end it and needs more time.
The GOP seems to think Obama could have fixed the economy by now…with more tax cuts.
Funny I don’t recall the GOP being so impatient with Bush when his tax cuts failed to get the economy going.
Nope I seem to recall guys like Bobo though trying to dress up a turd and complaining about how Bush didn’t get any credit for his great economy.
8 years of mediocre growth in jobs wages the dow etc. Just what is the final count for the Bush years?

I would agree and would add Ohio to that high a rate if one of the Big Three folds.

Mid 30’s. Yese cold. Geared up with winter stuff and was comfortable.

I still think Obama needs to look to FDR and Keynes rather than Summers and Geithner on the economy.

Simple works. Like:

This Bush made economy still sucks.

As for laughs, in case you missed it yesterday at Crooks and Liars, here is a year-old PBS prank that is quite well done and quite funny:

http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal/open-thread-127

The latest unemployment rate I am seeing for Indiana is February, and it’s 9.4%. I’m at work and can’t take a lot of time to Google, but this was quoted in a column published March 27th. There may be a more recent figure for March that I haven’t seen yet.

But, but Kramer was on Tweety yesterday being euphoric about the DOW and proclaimed that the “depression” was “officially” over. /s

Boy, he keeps giving Stewart material.

You can’t make this stuff up.

– Looks like BofA won’t be paying up any time in the near, near future, despite vociferous CEO boasting to the contrary. Again, shocker

Is BOA still lobbying against Obama’s Union Vote bill with our bailout money? Was anyone punished for that yet?

Mandatory Drug tests needed at MSNBC?

But it is appearing that all that lobbying is working. Obama isn’t pressing for EFCA, the senate has it back-burnered.

I am truly hoping to get that sucker passed SOON but I have no faith in the Dems to actually serve the people they claim to stand for. Wall Street, after all the mess THEY caused, still pull the strings on Congresspuppets.

Calculated Risk talks about corporate office space dumping. And it ain’t pretty.

Man, I cannot believe the economy is so bad that corporations are banning bathroom use to save money? /s

That is a calculated risk…

Mornin all. All of us gardeners in the South are rained out Christy but it will dry up and we can get the gardens in. Most people rush the planting anyway. Until the soil temp gets up into the 60’s things will just sit there anyway and a lot of the seeds won’t germinate. Best to wait until things are nice and warm.

On the food stamp front…we shouldn’t overlook the fact that in many states, like here in Georgia, you can’t qualify for food stamps unless you are basically completely destitute. You can’t have any money in a savings account nor any buffer in the checking. You have to prove that you are truly and profoundly poor before you can get a penny. It is really a shame that you have to be completely against the wall and probably already hungry and malnourished before you can get a hand up.

C’mon folks. The DOW is up, the S&P is up. The G20 fixed everything (see above stock numbers). Don’t get lost in real numbers like unemployment and foreclosures. Those piddly things are meaningly next to the awesome power of the Market Force.

May the Force be with you (in your unemployment line).

err…”meaningless“, not “meaningly.

Major combat recovery operations in IraqAmerica have ended. In the Battle of Iraq Wall Street, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country economy

praying the strikethrough works at Christy’s place :D

Yeah, I hear you on that. My spouse has been working with his counterparts at a plant in Detroit Metro area and in Dayton OH area, shuffling their remaining manufacturing work around.

Eventually all three sites will close if there’s a Big Three bankruptcy. If recovery genuinely starts in 3 months, one or two may reopen, but the merger between Fiat-Chrysler will kill off one of the two sites.

In all of the aid to the auto industry, there is NONE for capital equipment manufacturers who supply the machines which make cars and the supplies for the cars, and the aid conditions to Chrysler will hurt the same people, too. You see, Fiat has an ownership stake in capital equipment firms overseas which compete with American machine manufacturers; Fiat will naturally give preference to buying from their own companies rather than U.S. firms. The government will give $$ to Fiat, which in turn will buy foreign equipment to put in U.S. plants. Lovely.

Nothing quite like watching one’s spouse figure out the optimum way to lay himself off, with this circus going on around us.

But Krugman and Baker are arguing. Oh noes! I hates it when that happens…

http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press

I think you meant to say, “May the Farce be with you.”

Man, I hear you. My husband is in a Tier III that also supplies to other industry sectors, which one would think would give some grace in terms of being a bit diversified. Unfortunately, the auto industry fail would still sink the company.

I wish this was a post-april fools day joke. http://www.governmentalityblog…..pinto.html

Why doesn’t President Obama use some stimuluw money to place an order for 300 million bootstraps? The he can give one to every American, they can pull themselves up and voila, problem solved.

-G

Stimulus. Coffee not working.

-G

Bootstrap futures are up…woo hoo!

G20 kabuki aside, what has me so frustrated is that obamaco show no signs of having a coherent plan for the economy (the looting part they seem to have down just fine).

and to top it all off, yesterday congress, led by barney franks, succeeded in getting the mark-to-market rule changed. welcome to mark-to-myth world. guess franks wants to be on the side of the banksters too.

argh!

Can homeowners who are upside down on their mortgages do that too.

It is my earnest belief that anyone who get’s foreclosed should remain in their homes and simply demand proof that the mortgage foreclosed upon is actually owned by the foreclosing entity.

As far as I’m concerned, if the mortgage has been so chopped up into a CDS that it is unclear who (if anyone) actually has rights to collect on the mortgage, then the home is ownerless and subject to squatter’s rights. If you cannot prove you actually have right to collect the mortgage and/or foreclose upon the property, then you cannot anymore than I can simply waltz in to the BoA CEO’s megamansion and declare him in arears to me and that I am foreclosing on HIS mortgage.

oh, and before i forget, a little bit of good news, we’ve got a great discussion going at oxdown on single payer and the bills that are in congress. BargainCountertenor’s diary on them is:

Single Payer Bills in Congress: First Impressions

the comments should be open through tomorrow and i expect BargainCountertenor will be back later today to answer questions, etc.

probably, that is if you are a bankster who has contributed millions of dollars to the correct political campaigns. *g*

I read the Wolcott piece. He didn’t break any new ground, but the writing is sparkling.

“To delve into the editorial pages of The Washington Post is to crack open an even creakier sarcophagus, where the dead paw of consensus maintains a semblance of order, continuity, prudence. Screams of boredom echo through the vault, but the sneer etched on columnist Charles Krauthammer’s face remains unmerciful. “

Does this pour out of him or does Wolcott have to arduously mine and burnish it?

selise reminds me -

Attention California Firedogs:

With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.

Hundreds of nurses, doctors, healthcare and labor activists will rally at 9 a.m. outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles.

link

Morning Christy !
Can ya save me a place in the bread line ?

I have to leave shortly to go lobby for and squeeze into the hearing room for CO HB 1273 which is our state single payer legislation.

good luck to foothillsmike and all socal firedogs willing to go rally for single payer (and thanks to cbl2 for the reminder). you all are on the front lines of a fight for all of us. many many thanks.

New post from Jane back at FDL…

Best of luck to you and spouse. Wonder if your spouse and mine work for same biz or competing, because it sure sounds the same at your house as at mine.

Spouse’s firm sells capital equipmt to firms which make construction equipment for infrastructure; you’d think they’d be ordering now, but they are still holding back. The trickle-down from the stimulus monies sent to states is going to be 3-6months from reaching us; hope folks can hold out that long.

Also know of a guy laid off this week who worked in IT related to hospital records; yet another example of the stimulus money not making it in time.

in theory at least, the new jobs lost rate will keep on going up until we turn the corner and business confidence rises, so the situation will continue to get worse effectively until there are signs of substantial recovery. Until that happens businesses will simply fire people at an increasing rate. There ain’t to relief here…

I’m a little hopeful about the G-20 $1.1 trillion in IMF commitments and helpful noises coming out of London and Beijing, and not-so-helpful but at least slightly less-than bellicose noises coming out of Brussels, Paris, and Tokyo.

The employment numbers are bogus – things are much worse. The BLS just revised January’s numbers down by 90K jobs for a SECOND time, and decided to wait to release the February revisions (likely too much bad news to give to the sheeple all at once).

I guess the government has decided to add “trickle-out” of the bad news to go along with the “trickle-down” that continues unabated under the Obama administration.

Great post, as per usual.

I think tracking the unemployment numbers is huge. Media has everyone tracking the stock market. In terms of halting the looting of America’s future, I think getting the word out about unemployment is crucial.

digg is open.

My h is down from your h’s in the tier chain — chem related industry. My h’s probably supplies to your h’s…

Know you are in our thoughts.

I will say, I have been surprised at how slow people have been to catch on to the total seriousness of the economic issues.

Dang — had to run out and get my driver’s license renewed, and it took an hour and a half. Thought if I went early in the morning on a rainy day it would be faster.

Sorry to miss so much of the thread…

Actually, there have been lots of good news signs lately, they just haven’t got much coverage relative to the bad news. But that doesn’t mean we’re anywhere near out of the woods yet.

Ooops! Wrong link! Here’s the right one.

Ugh. Your spouse is more closely related to the industry I left and the one my best friend lost her job with last month.

My dad and brother also worked with chem folks; dad’s fortunately retired, but my kid brother lost his job in January with Delco in neighboring Indiana.

Big dose of ugly all around.

Hey, pups – here’s some more good news -maybe -
I’ve been out of work for 4 1/2 months; signed up with temporary agencies since January – nothing until this week.
Wed. I was given my first assignment, to start the next day for 6 wks – but (bad news first) just after 5:00 the company cancelled — did their endofmonth budget review and decided they couldn’t afford it. Gulp.

But, I am now waiting while my contact at same agency gets details on another job to start this afternoon! For a “few weeks.”

It’s ten dollars an hour and on the other side of town – she wasn’t sure I’d want it, but , hey $10 / hr beats $0 / hr any time in my book. I can type and I can answer the phone. So what if it’s “beneath” me? As I recall, Arthur Miller (and a bunch of other intellectual types) worked in a hardware store after graduating from City College in the depression. You do what you gotta do, right?
Anyway, although I haven’t hear d back yet, this is progress. Both my staffing agencies have said there has been NOTHING for weeks and weeks, until THIS week.

I wouldn’t want to predict a trend, but…we can cross our fingers. Maybe this is all linked with PW’s news on her link.

demi – hang in there – for people with jobs and hard decisions to make (maybe she’d like to hire all of you but can only take one and feels bad), time passes faster than for those of us twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the phone to ring. Good luck!

Update – Is anybody still here?
Call back from staffing agency – temp job won’t start today, but Monday – employer “didn’t realize how late it was already.” (noon here).

I won’t count my chickens until I actually arrive and begin working, I think, but I don’t mind having the rest of today off. Maybe I can read Bargain Countertenor’s posts on the single-payer plan between resume-editing and emailing. (Oh, I’ll apply for damn near anything at this point. I had avoided part-time, but now I’m ready to consider that, too. Maybe I’ll be “lucky” -like that woman Bush congratulated on her 3 jobs – and end up surviving with two part-time jobs)

Anyway, it’s still better than it was a week ago.

Oh, and my not-exactly-ex-H has been working less (without pay) because his manufacturing company (yes, tied to the auto industry) had so little work. This weekend the third day of a 3-day shift has been restored because there’s more work.
Hmmmm. We’ve got our fingers crossed!

Ok, so I’m talking to myself – but have to put up a thank-you for the link to Wolcott’s scorcher.
Stating the obvious of course – except, apparently, to those who “govern” us and report on us, it’s not. Lovely.

“Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler.”

There’s a small homage to that ‘war’ in the Sandra Bullock & Hugh Grant movie “Two Weeks Notice” where she is leaving the company and wants to take “her” stapler, but the bosses new girlfriend (played by Alicia Witt) thinks it should stay.

I wonder how many other stories have been influenced by Office Space. I hope to Allah the WTC wasn’t just another rip-off copycat. That would be a little too much karma for somebody special.

Funny I don’t recall the GOP being so impatient with Bush when his tax cuts failed to get the economy going.

I was listening to House speeches yesterday evening and actually heard a Republican trying to pin it all on Clinton, but at one point mentioning the Bush tax cuts and how they weren’t really very succesful. He had a very melancholic sound in his voice and I know he was really sad that he now realized their entire economic ideology was a failure. But, that didn’t stop him from going on to hammer Clinton repeatedly. Apparently it’s open season on Clinton even when Clinton is just giving the Republicans what they ask for. Go figure.

BTW, Christy, I like your blog look. The masthead is cool and reminds me of a lazy day at the lake/pool when you don’t even feel like skimming stones…just toss one in to make a ‘plunk’ and circles. Very nice.

I am truly hoping to get that sucker passed SOON

IMO, big economic issues come first: crisis, health care reform, energy reform, end Iraq warring/occupation, world trade

EFCA, cap & trade (or somesuch) and some other things are important, but less important right now

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing is our need to deal with Al Qaeda and the cost of that. It’s not good to have such expenses when you’re in the middle of other economic problems. And, the costs associated with reducing the possibility of nuclear terrorism aren’t going away very soon.

Hang in there. We’re also on that same fine line right now. Spouse now has a meeting in two weeks with construction equipmt co. which might place order — but the meeting is the same week the parent corp. will decide when to shut down his plant.

It’s going to be like this for several months, salvation on a razor’s edge.

You’re so right. My spouse never knows when he goes to work after his days off whether they’ll be called to a meeting and told x number of people are being laid off, shifts ending, unpaid days off will be imposed, etc, etc. All of the above and more have happened in the last six months. He’s a nervous wreck–possibility of major pay cut in May “if things haven’t picked up by then.”

Frankly, I’d rather be unemployed! (well, mentally., anyway – it’s hard on everyone’s psyche, isn’t it?)
Good luck to you and your spouse.

Thanks, Mark — I absolutely love it. You would not believe the work it took to get just this sort of zen/mellow feel, though — but it was well worth it from my perspective because it’s a page that wears well over time for me.

I wanted a place where people would pause and really think, and to do that, I wanted to get the mental clutter mostly out of the way on the page. I hope we succeeded with that…

It’s definitely hard on everyone’s psyche, most assuredly. I don’t what kind of people are managing your spouse’s business; I can only tell you on the other side of the decision divide that this has preoccupied so much of our pillow talk and day-to-day conversation in our house, from pay cuts already implemented a couple of times to cuts in staff on two occasions.

Employee X has recently been treated for cancer; Employee Y has kids at college, Employee Z is a single parent with a troubled teen, Employee W is fortunately living with parents they care for, and so on; their faces and their situations enter into so many of our household conversations, knowing that the next two weeks will force dramatic changes on them and that favorites can’t be played, that their personal situations can only be accommodated so far, up to the point where the bank will call the ultimate shot. As a manager my spouse is trying to both keep his team together, keep the competition from eating at them and taking advantage of the situation with the assumption they are better capitalized, read the minds of his holding company “overlords” and the bank which funds them, while trying to find any business at all to keep the doors open.

And there are times like last night where my spouse and I simply can’t talk about it any more. What new thing can be said after months of this sword of Damocles’ hanging over our heads? For the kids we sometimes have to pretend it’s not there and simply concentrate on being with them. And last night it was enough to get us through to another day.