In case you've forgotten, we are not alone

Well worth the read, and -- I say this in the hope of keeping this thread from becoming another home for the usual pissing matches -- worth reading with eyes as nonpartisan as possible. A person who would read that and react first by launching a partisan offensive is just looking to pick a fight, eager to get into a pissing contest at the campfire while the forest burns.

Thanks for posting that link, Vonnegut.

 

Hey, I don't want to piss anywhere, except on the liars and manipulators covering the past 20 years. Honesty scares the hell out of me. I want some good news, somewhere, and know that it bears truth. I don't know that there is any.

 

And based on the Harper's article, I'll say what the assholes aren't saying. We're in Great Depression II. And I want an Old Testament plague to hit the SuperRich that manipulated this.

 

1982 Wingman? Would that be during the Reign of King Ronnie? I thought everything was just great during the Reagan years.

 

Thank you. The major difference is that, in 1982, people were not as leveraged (mortgage, credit cards) as they are right now. Those were hard times -- not to mention that mortgages were at about 14% back then (although, you could say that homes were a bit more affordable, at least from a price:income ratio).

But, wait, I thought electing President Obama was going to stop all of this. We're now a week into this and, we've already lost another 100,000 jobs. What...that's not what was promised. Oh...yeah, let's elect the most anti-business presidential candidate of a major party (and give him a friendly Congress), demand nationalized health care, tax the only people with any real money in this country at a higher rate than they currently pay, especially the corporations.

No, that won't frighten any businesses into dropping payroll. Not at all.

But, hey, we'll be happy workers for the State as we take a few years off from American innovation and learn how to build bridges.

 

Yes, exmediahack, let's give Obama..or anyone else for that matter..a week to solve this mess.

My "thank you, george" tag to my original post really is unfair. This mess is at least 30 years in the making -- from Carter to Reagan to Bush to Clinton to Bush. It's not going to be undone in a week or a month or a year or probably even for Obama's first term.
You, I'd guess, have not lived that long. I have. And I've been in the newspaper business since the Nixon administration and have always made - and continue to make -- a respectable living.
I understand the impending doom that younger people in our business feel.
But, again, my point in starting this thread was to point out that this is not just a newspaper industry problem. It is far bigger than "us."
We are in is a worldwide recession (depression?) that is not going to disappear in a matter of months.

 

Good post. Important thread.

Related to the first post:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/business/economy/27layoffs.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

It's important to have threads like these, despite their potential for depression (lower-case 'd'), because there is an interconnectedness to all this we can't ignore.

 

Yeah, nobody was dropping payroll during the final several months of the business-friendly Bush II Regime.

 

Absolutely agreed. I "threw out the hyperbole" there as well. Of course it can't get fixed by a president in one week, one month or probably all of 2009.

It is a fundamental issue we have to deal with.

This current economic situation is far bigger than one president, whether Bush or Obama.

I guess that I first started to see it around July/August this year when people suddenly stopped spending money. Sales trickled off in so many industries, leading to where we are now.

Personally, I'm truly conflicted on how best to proceed. We're in a new city (been here almost a year), still renting but are now at a very comfortable level. We could buy a great house while prices are low...but we don't want to get leveraged if any layoffs come (although I doubt it as a multi-year contract employee -- in other words, they'll probably go after others here first). We could purchase plenty of "things" but I've never been the material type.

So, instead of spending (and, presumably, helping the economy with my little speck of influence), I guess I'd rather just pay off bad debt (years of being a sports guy before leaving) and "hoard" the rest. It's the paradox of thrift -- I am helping out my own situation (getting out of debt) but not anyone else's (not spending anything).

There is a part of me that does feel guilty that we're doing so well while many others are losing their job...but, then I think back to when I was making 16k as an entry-level TV sports guy. Nobody cried for me -- they just told me to 'get out of sports, go to news'. So I did.

 

I'm with you on both of those points.

And while nobody cried for me a few years ago when I was sleeping on an air mattress and couldn't afford to buy anything but a metal folding chair to sit on in my apartment, I have tons of empathy for the people who are in financial straits these days. At least I had a job then, and had the opportunity to work myself into a better situation. Many today don't have any idea where their next paycheck is coming from. That's scary as hell.

 

This may get me some, "well, duhhh" comments.

Maybe this is an effect of having so much information, via the Internet/news/message boards. In 1982, when there were 6,000 layoffs three states away, it was a blip in the paper or maybe 30 seconds on the national news (remember, we had the Cold War on the front page/as lead story back then!). There is a good deal of fear and anxiety in 2008/09, probably more than back then.

While we may not know our neighbors as well as we did in 1982, we do have access to all of this information which can set off a panic of 'non spending' from those of us with jobs.

I guess I'm just blessed that I landed this job back in April, before the bottom started to fall out. I have a feeling that, if I was at my last city, I'd probably be on the verge of being out of work.

 

Employment numbers always lag behind the economic numbers in a recession. Meaning if we hit the bottom today, it'll be six months to a year before we see hiring turn around.

2009's gonna suck for a lot of people.