http://www.ourfuture.org/news-headline/record-drop-private-sector-jobs Job report . Huge drop.
A big part of what we are seeing is because the US dollar is worthless. All those 8 years of deficit spending, Congress blowing billions on wasteful crap-it is all coming home now! Wait till GM declare bankruptcy-then you WILL see massive unemployment. When people are spending 80% of their paycheck on energy, there is NOTHING left for consumer goods-so don’t be surprised if the malls are empty this Christmas! And the perpetrators of this 9the Congress)-they are off blaming the oil companies!
Try 48127 and move slowly east.
::shrug:: I don’t mean to sound cavalier, but that area’s been deader than a doornail, job-wise, for at least 30 years. I definitely think that predatory lenders should be strung up by their balls, but hanging out in Detroit waiting for the jobs to come back is tantamount to being a Cargo Cult, IMHO. I really do hate that some of our once-proud manufacturing cities have come to this, and I feel sorry for the people who made their lives there. And I do think the government should help, though; perhaps a few hundred thousand U-Hauls?
Very cavalier. Ten years ago Detroit was a big time job market.Six years ago there were lots of jobs. But the midwest suffers from the exodus of machine tool and manufacturing . We got hit hard.Detroit has the extra fun of a scandal a day in city administration. We still have a skilled and educated base to draw from.
Try Miami or Key West on the map of foreclosures. Pick almost any town and zero in. Big prices on the California foreclosures.
Way back when I was a college freshman, my Econ 101 professor made the argument that the economy is a state of mind, and that if we think it’s going in the toilet, we’ll act defensively and conservatively, sending the economy into the toilet. Of course, he told us that’s a gross over-simplification, but his point was that, when it comes to the economy, what we think is often as important as what is.
Yeah, I think the media’s constant hammering on the economy is partly responsible for the degree to which the economy has slowed, but you gotta’ give credit to the spiraling price of energy and the mortgage fiasco, too.
Yeah; the cold light of morning tells me I wasn’t really fair there - sorry.
Like many things, there’s tons of reasons why it’s happened. We could start by blaming the government and the corporations to which they are beholden. But that’s just the low hanging fruit.
The US dollar isn’t “worthless”. It’s just worth less than it was. And 80% seems like a lot to be spending on energy.
The newspaper business has been “dying” for decades. That’s probably why the New York Times just built the third tallest building in Manhattan.
But it will also create demand for people around the Gen-X age to fill many of those positions.
The media certainly exacerbates or at least exagerates America’s economic situation. I remember in the 90s during the dot-com bubble, the constant tales of tech employees becoming millionares overnight. Smart people were leaving jobs in investment banks and Fortune 500 companies so they can go be a part of some start up that sold pet goods online. Back then the good times were never going to end and we were seeing a “fundamental change in how business and economics works”.
It always helps to remember that most of these articles are written by the same kids you know from college who majored in Journalism.
I’d say it’s a sliding scale based on breadth of influence/exposure. Few know Kunstler’s name, everybody knows Lou Dobbs’.
I’m still waiting for a definition of “the media” in the context of this discussion.
Since I was the OP, I’ll do that. I was referring to television, mainly, because that’s where I noticed it being most egregious. It’s partly a format problem; newspapers/online news have time to do some 'splaining, or at least a significant enough number of them do. Television goes in 30 second bursts, toggling between RO and scare tactics, and sensationalism reigns supreme. There are certainly exceptions, but I don’t think most Americans take the time to find them.
Radio’s a mixed bag, IMHO, due to narrow formatting.
Okay. Let’s grant that television’s analysis of, or at least communication regarding, the economy is poor.
On what other current-events topic, or topics, is television’s analysis and/or communication not poor?
Oh, I’m with you on that. I was wondering whether there’s overkill on this issue(signs point to Yes) and if that could be affecting consumer confidence to a significant enough degree to further drag the economy down.
I think we are talking about mainstream tv, magazines and newspapers here. What else would we be talking about?
Radio (there are many many influential personalities, after all, who don’t have a big non-radio presence)? Popular non-fiction books? Blogs?
HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost Of course facts have their liberal biases too. We are not at the bottom of the real estate bubble yet. Financial corporations are still facing problems due to their lack of oversight. We still have a lot to shake out yet, Oh and 6 straight months of the economy shedding jobs is sure a sign of a healthy economy.