The Decline: The Geography of a Recession

[Foxxtrot]

Man, this is one ugly map. I do like how it goes from vibrant white to darker more rotten colors. Makes it stick when you think about all the folks out there wondering when or if the next six months will see the next boot drop. Scary stuff to consider what is next. Retail earnings in January, Commercial real estate loans coming due, housing starts, and every other damn report is coming up for 4th quarter. God help us from this administration and Congress.

http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

[Dee]

Good grief. I think I'll get under the bed. That's depressin.

[fr3db3ar]

I've been out since Feb.  I have an interview on Wed.....hopefully that works out.

[Foxxtrot]

been out since June 2008. Side jobs and back to college for me since we are settled.

My industry is dead (transportation, logistics, Supply chain).

[nomosendero]

Wow!! 

East of the big river, the upper Mid-West & the left coast is esp. bad.

[Questor]

Golly gee! Thank you master Obama! I can graphically see the change you have brought to the country.

[steve y]

I'm sorry you fellas are havin such a rough go. I hope things will start lookin up for you. God bless you. Merry Christmas

[Dee]

I've been out since the 3rd of October. First time EVER, and I'm 60. Still lookin.

[nomosendero]

I hope y'all find something soon, I talk to customers every day & I don't see good things for awhile, I heard some Demons, I mean Socialists Demoncraps say the recession is over, but I haven't seen those signs yet & it would be hard to convince someone without a job that things are good!

[Questor]

I hope the best for you too. I didn't read the posts earlier. Hard times. Dang!

[Redtail1949]

it is a good visual that shows whats going on. it is scary to know the democrates insist on spending us to oblivion regardless of whether or not its good for the economy. the worst is yet to come.

thanks for the post

[victorcharlie]

Obama says the recessions over........so it must be over, right?

It must be a "jobless" recovery right?

[Foxxtrot]

These numbers aren't even the worst. The map shows U3 only.

These portray the U3 and U6 unemployment data.

http://data.bls.gov/


U3
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title:        (Seas) Unemployment Rate
Labor force status:  Unemployment rate
Type of data:        Percent or rate
Age:                 16 years and over

Year   Jan   Feb   Mar   Apr   May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec   Annual
2007   4.6   4.5   4.4   4.5   4.5   4.6   4.7   4.7   4.7   4.8   4.7   4.9   
2008   4.9   4.8   5.1   5.0   5.5   5.6   5.8   6.2   6.2   6.6   6.8   7.2   
2009   7.6   8.1   8.5   8.9   9.4   9.5   9.4   9.7   9.8   10.2   10.0       

U6
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title:        (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
Labor force status:  Aggregated totals unemployed
Type of data:        Percent or rate
Age:                 16 years and over
Percent/rates:       Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached

Year   Jan   Feb   Mar   Apr   May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec   Annual
2007   8.3   8.1   8.0   8.2   8.3   8.3   8.3   8.5   8.4   8.5   8.4   8.7   
2008   9.0   9.0   9.1   9.2   9.8   10.1   10.4   10.9   11.2   12.0   12.6   13.5   
2009   13.9   14.8   15.6   15.8   16.4   16.5   16.3   16.8   17.0   17.5   17.2       

[alsaqr]

i wish all of you the very best.  The sad thing is that this recession/depression could have been prevented.   

[Foxxtrot]

i wish all of you the very best.  The sad thing is that this recession/depression could have been prevented.   

Glass Steagall Act repeal

The bill that ultimately repealed the Act was introduced in the Senate by Phil Gramm (Republican of Texas) and in the House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa) in 1999. The bills were passed by a Republican majority, basically following party lines by a 54–44 vote in the Senate[12] and by a bi-partisan 343–86 vote in the House of Representatives.[13] After passing both the Senate and House the bill was moved to a conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. The final bill resolving the differences was passed in the Senate 90–8 (one not voting) and in the House: 362–57 (15 not voting). The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.

Events following repeal

The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, which was in 1999 the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities.[15] Elizabeth Warren,[16] co-author of All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan (Free Press, 2005) (ISBN 0-7432-6987-X) and one of the five outside experts who constitute the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has said that the repeal of this act contributed to the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009,[17] [18] although some believe that the increased flexibility allowed by the repeal of Glass–Steagall mitigated or prevented the failure of some American banks.

[rk4570]

This didnt start start in the last year, or 5 years or even 10 years. It started in the 1970s.

FASCISM...."A system of government that excerises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with a belligerent nationalism".

Think about it!. Who  benifits? Only the very wealthy, bankers, and big business. 

[alsaqr]

Foxxtrot is spot on.  The repeal of Glass-Steagall also set the stage for the totally unregulated credit default swaps that contributed to the Wall St. meltdown.  There are 45-75 trillion dollars of CDSs out there; no one knows for sure what the total is-they are unregulated.  These CDSs have the ability to totally trash the world's economy.  They all originated right here in the USA.  

The last head of the SEC under Bush was a career political puke who knew nothing about banking or much of anything else.  Christopher Cox stymied the investigation of shady Wall St. deals.  

Ever wonder why the Bush bunch went after the governor of NY for seeing a prostitute?   It is because
Spitzer blew the whistle on another scummy white house deal.  Many, if not most states had laws against predatory lending.  The governors and attorney generals of all 50 states appealed to the Bush bunch to stop predatory lending.  The Bush bunch came down square on the side of the predatory lenders.  The SEC and Bush fought them in federal court and won a 5-4 decision in the SCOTUS.  Spitzer blew the whistle on the Bush bunches shady dealings.   The Bush, Cheney, Rove cabal were totally infuriated when Spitzer wrote this article in the Washington Post.  So they charged him with seeing a prostitute.  The charge was later dropped.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

[ironglow]

This didnt start start in the last year, or 5 years or even 10 years. It started in the 1970s.

FASCISM...."A system of government that excerises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with a belligerent nationalism".

Think about it!. Who  benifits? Only the very wealthy, bankers, and big business. 

 rk4570;

   I rather wonder where you get your definitions from, or if they are just your own. Fascism is neither a sole property of the left or the right; it is brought on by "control freaks' fro0m either side of the aisle:

  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fascism

  Fascism being the marrying of the government with the means of finance and production, we have never in the history of this nation, witnessed the power grab such as this Socialist/Marxist administration has tried to foist on The American public !
    Never have we had government control all the major banks in the country, Government Motors is a totally new pheonomenon and no administration has attempted to dictate who does and does not get medical treatment...shades of the old Soviet Union...

   I hasten to remind you that Hityler's Nazi regime was Facistic....and the very name Nazi, was an acronym for ...National Socialists..

[Redtail1949]

Listen to this in entirety and it will accurately describe where Facisim is on the Political Spectrum.....

http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/