Ever since I got put on half-time for half-pay because of the Recession, I’ve been saving money wherever possible. One way I save a ton of money is by making my own lattes in the morning. I didn’t spend hundreds of dollars on a latte machine either. Instead, I use some very simple tools and ingredients to make a yummy latte for less than $1 per day. Check it out:
Slate’s Interactive Job Loss map is so freaking cool and informative. It shows the job gains and losses over the last two and a half years. Notice how the Bay Area kept posting job gains until about August 2008? The losses really pile up in tech-heavy SF around November/December 2008. That about sums up my experience with incoming projects too. We were pretty busy through about August/September of 2008 and then things slowed waaay down. And, they’ve stayed slow. No wonder! Now I have the big red circle on the map to validate that I’m not alone.
Dude, check out the map (below) that Mint.com featured on where the stimulus jobs will be created. What’s more, over at their site they show a table with unemployment numbers and number of jobs created. Definitely worth taking a look at.
I remain a near- and medium-term pessimist about the economy, but we’ll eventually emerge from the Great Recession. When we do, the renewed support and emphasis on science and technology — on reality — offers an opportunity to return to the spirit of my youth when the best and brightest wanted to become scientists and engineers, not financiers or lawyers. The challenge of effective action on climate change certainly provides a staggering goal for the ambitious. Finally, I’m hopeful about the resources and thinking the administration is putting into rescuing our public education system.
A better education system remains the key to any optimistic view. Imagine a country where children are encouraged to exercise their imaginations and take risks. Where the goal isn’t more homework, but more signs of initiative and independent thinking. That creates a system that makes the most of America’s advantages, rather than try to create a pale imitation of Singaporean or Chinese education. There are numerous paths to national well-being and prosperity and I think we have a chance to chart one that is uniquely ours.
This paints a pretty grim picture of our economy. I just got moved to half-time for half-pay at my company. Things are not good and not likely to likely to get better soon. I’m glad that I still have some income and my benefits in place. But, the crunch has now come home and I’ll be scaling WAY back.
This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession – showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been. Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.
By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.
This is a graphic of the Standard and Poor’s stock index’s annual returns, placing every year since 1825 in a column of returns from -50% to +60%. As you can see, it is a rough bell curve, with 45 of those 185 years falling in the +0-10% column. There are only 5 years each in the 40-50% and 50-60% return columns, and, through 2007, there were only one year each in the -31-40% and -41-50% columns. You can see where 2008 to date falls.
It’s a question every pundit likes to discuss. I happen to like CNN Money’s Anthony Karydakis’s take on the matter. He takes a look at previous recessions and compares and contrasts them with our current one. Here’s a snippet:
So now the question is: when will it end, and how deep will it get?
There are good reasons to be worried about both of these measurements, as the headwinds facing the economy are powerful indeed. But it’s best to resist the temptation to give in to predictions of unconditional gloom and take a cool-headed look at how this recession compares so far to the many other downturns we’ve survived.
On the likely depth of the recession, it has been often said that this may be the most severe recession “in decades.” This statement is almost certainly true but not particularly informative, as the two most recent recessions, in 1990-91 and 2001, turned out to be famously mild and short-lived by historical standards. So the real question remains: “the deepest recession” in exactly how many decades?
I’ve been meaning to watch The End of Suburbia since I first heard about it in 2004. Well, I finally got around to watching it on the flight back from Virginia on Sunday. The documentary explores the history of suburban development, and its fate when peak oil production is reached. These guys knew exactly what they were talking about. Almost everything they predicted for 2010 almost four years ago is coming to pass today.
A few relevant quotes include:
What would it be like to live after the Hubbert Peak with world oil declining. And, I have this list of things:
Because energy prices and the economy are so closely intertwined, [reaching Hubbert's peak globally] would probably result in an economic recession. Richard Heinberg
