Solidarity Economics. (pdf) Strategies for Building New Economies From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out. [more inside]
posted by lunit on Jan 2, 2010 - 11 comments

Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy and workers. For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different. The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth. Meanwhile, some of the administration's remedies might be making things worse: U.S. Loan Effort Is Seen as Adding to Housing Woes. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword on Jan 2, 2010 - 69 comments

Frank Capra meets Collateralized Debt Obligations:

The idea is simple: If enough people who have money in one of the big four banks move it into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks, then collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward re-rigging the financial system so it becomes again the productive, stable engine for growth it's meant to be. It's neither Left nor Right -- it's populism at its best.

Amid the financial headlines (about new banking reforms, more bank failures, the need for more lending by the fat-cats, the question of whether a European-style bonus-tax might be possible here, and the shrinking of the middle class), on PBS yesterday Bill Moyers wondered, in an in-depth segment (with organizers from here and here), whether a new wave of populist economic activism is perhaps, despite all odds, beginning to make a dent after all.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Dec 12, 2009 - 31 comments

In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee... where he’s seeking re-appointment as the Fed’s chairman, Bernanke called for cutbacks in Medicare and Social Security... “Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money is, as he put it,” Bernanke said. “The money in this case is in entitlements.” [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Dec 4, 2009 - 91 comments

“We send something whenever we have a little extra, at least enough so he can eat." Remittances, the small money transfers a previous FPP called "the most important antipoverty program in the world", are now flowing the opposite direction. Yes, poor families in southern Mexico are having scramble to find money to send north to their out of work relatives in the US.
posted by Forktine on Nov 18, 2009 - 14 comments

A year and a half ago, Henry Chung was an assistant vice president at Merrill Lynch. Now he's an NYPD patrol officer.
posted by four panels on Nov 17, 2009 - 43 comments

In 2010, Obama will have a miserable year, NATO may lose in Afghanistan, the UK gets a regime change, China needs to chill, India's factories will overtake its farms, Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum, the stimulus will need an exit strategy, the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2", African football will unite Korea, conflict over natural resources will grow, Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled, the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable), technology will grow ever more ubiquitous, we'll all charge our phones via USB, MBAs will be uncool, the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so the Tens begin.

The Economist: The World in 2010. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Nov 14, 2009 - 60 comments

It sounds like a George Lopez joke. “Times are so bad that I saw an Anglo day laborer standing outside Home Depot the other day.” Except it’s true.
posted by Joe Beese on Nov 11, 2009 - 31 comments

The jobless rate for people like you.
posted by Afroblanco on Nov 9, 2009 - 113 comments

Raquel Rolnik is the U.N.'s new Special Rappoteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. So far, she has investigated forced evictions in Phnom Penh and housing destroyed by rising sea levels in the Maldives. This week, she's investigating whether limited access to affordable housing is a human rights violation in the U.S. [more inside]
posted by peachfuzz on Nov 3, 2009 - 21 comments

The Last Days of Gourmet Some photos of the last few days of clean-up from the inside of Gourmet Magazine's offices.
posted by mathowie on Nov 2, 2009 - 59 comments

Latvia's Tiger Economy Loses Its Bite: Less than a year after Latvia joined the E.U. in 2004, its growth rate topped all of Europe. As global stock markets overheated and competition for investment opportunities intensified, Scandinavian banks showered Latvia with cheap credit. Now, with the highest unemployment in Europe, and propped up by $10 billion in IMF loans, Latvia's economy struggles to stay afloat.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Nov 1, 2009 - 14 comments

Looks like Paul Volker is attempting to bring some sanity back to the U.S. banking industry, as adviser to the Obama administration. But is anybody listening?
posted by GreyFoxVT on Oct 25, 2009 - 29 comments

Last week the House Committee on Financial Services approved legislation to regulate derivatives. Some critics contend that the legislation does not go far enough, and there is fear that there are too many exemptions to the rules: reforming the $42 trillion market for credit swaps is crucial if taxpayers are to be protected from future rescues of institutions deemed not only too big but also too interconnected to fail. [more inside]
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Oct 18, 2009 - 25 comments

Last week in Detroit, where unemployment is close to 30%, one third of all households are in poverty, and whole neighborhoods have been abandoned, chaos ensued as an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people lined up in the hopes of getting federal aid. 65,000 applications were taken for a new program that will fund only 3,500 people (via).
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Oct 11, 2009 - 83 comments

Wall Street's Near Death Experience
posted by SeizeTheDay on Oct 6, 2009 - 31 comments

Being a same-sex, taxpaying couple is more expensive, overall, than being a straight, taxpaying couple, for the same services and benefits, when available.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Oct 2, 2009 - 62 comments

A government stimulus can overwhelm the impact of a credit crunch, and the innate dynamic of a productive economy can re-assert itself after such a crisis, leading to renewed growth. But this not merely a crisis of liquidity. It is one of excessive private debt, on a scale that is also unprecedented. Economist Steve Keen on the global debt bubble. [more inside]
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Sep 20, 2009 - 55 comments

A gigantic fleet of semi-abandoned cargo and container ships has been photographed east of Singapore. Meanwhile, the ship-breaking yards at Alang are booming, and the shipping industry is looking for ways to weather the storm. As the recession slashes demand, it seems the shipping industry may be heading for dry dock...
posted by vorfeed on Sep 14, 2009 - 47 comments

Just how credible is Wikipedia? While some have tested this empirically, others have chosen more dubious methodology. For a site that gives no credit to its post authors, one wonders, why even bother?
posted by iamkimiam on Sep 3, 2009 - 94 comments

This fall, law students are competing for half as many openings at big firms as they were last year in what is shaping up to be the most wrenching job search season in over 50 years.

“Had I seen where the market was going, I would’ve gone to a lower-ranked but less expensive public school,” [a second year law student at Penn] said. “I’m questioning whether law school was the right choice at all."
posted by plexi on Aug 26, 2009 - 214 comments

The economy is abjectly terrible, right? It's so bad that nowadays, a picture is only worth 200 words. On the other hand, the recession is over in Germany and France, and in the United States, the unemployment rate dropped just a smidgen last month. [more inside]
posted by malapropist on Aug 13, 2009 - 39 comments

"It's a different way of thinking about 'local' that's not quite as literal," says a consumer research consultant in an article running this week in alternative newspapers nationwide. The piece (by Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance) describes the response of global and national companies to the reality that consumers are moving more of their dollars into purchasing at locally owned businesses, representing both a threat, and an opportunity for companies that can successfully rebrand themselves as 'local'. As with greenwashing before it, 'localwashing' seeks to lure customers based on perception of values alone, resulting in such phenomena as Frito-Lay highlighting farmers from 27 states as the "local" growers for its potato chips and Hellman's Mayonnaise piloting a campaign in Canada to present its product as 'local' because most of the ingredients are from North America.
posted by Miko on Aug 5, 2009 - 58 comments

For a time the Internet's own poster-child for irrational exuberance and underwater mortgages, Casey Serin (previously discussed on Metafilter), the blogger behind iaminforeclosure.com and millionairebychristmas.com, is interviewed by WalletPop about his future plans... which include living in a van and panning for gold. The real-estate market in the US continues to present post-apocalyptic stories.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Aug 4, 2009 - 29 comments

How green was my valley: California's economic meltdown The fields of wheat, cotton and cantaloupe that sustained his family for three generations are gone. The land is a mess of fallow fields, cracked earth and swirling dust. (PDF - By some estimates, 12.8% of the United States' agricultural production (as measured by dollar value) comes from California, and the majority of that is in the Central Valley). However, his particular scene of devastation, Mr. Allen argues, has nothing to do with the credit crisis, the housing crash or the downturn that has California in a vice grip. It has to do with a seven-centimetre-long, semi-translucent, steel blue fish known as the Delta smelt. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Jul 24, 2009 - 76 comments

Paul Solman examines how the number of jobless people who fall outside of official unemployment counts (video) offer a different picture of the nation's economic recovery. Transcript here. [more inside]
posted by gman on Jul 3, 2009 - 41 comments

The Death of Macho - "The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent."
posted by waitangi on Jul 2, 2009 - 61 comments

Canning makes a comeback. Is it just another foodie trend? Or is canning back for good? [more inside]
posted by sararah on Jun 30, 2009 - 106 comments

Douglas Rushkoff was mugged on Christmas Eve. After posting about the incident on a neighborhood message board, the response was not concern about crime or his safety but about the negative effect this might have on property values. Rushkoff writes in a new book (and discusses on BloggingHeads) the corporatization of our culture and the need to deal in currencies which are local and carry innate value. Previously.
posted by l33tpolicywonk on Jun 24, 2009 - 72 comments

The Austin Lounge Lizards are Too Big To Fail. (SLYT)
posted by telstar on Jun 8, 2009 - 16 comments

Susan is currently looking for work. But in this case, instead of asking someone to hire her, Susan is looking to hire a boss. If you're a boss interested in this opportunity, you can apply here.
posted by ShawnStruck on Jun 4, 2009 - 194 comments

Ecocomics: Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science. With such entries as "Superman, New Krypton, and Labor Unions" and "The Construction Industry in Comics."
posted by dersins on May 28, 2009 - 26 comments

Standard & Poor’s changed the UK's credit outlook from stable to negative a few days ago, and warned that there is a chance the UK could lose its AAA rating. Meanwhile, Moodys, another of the big 3 rating agencies, has warned that the US might also eventually lose its AAA rating. The UK announcement caused sterling to drop by 1% and the FTSE by 2%. However, many blame the same rating agencies for their part in triggering the subprime crisis. The irony of this is not lost on the Wall Street Journal, who note that "After all, those governments are jacking up spending, in part, to bail out the financial firms who gobbled up those 'AAA' asset backed securities duly blessed by the credit ratings firms." [more inside]
posted by memebake on May 26, 2009 - 38 comments

NRW 1946—2006. Short articles chronicling North Rhine-Westphalia. The site has one rather large shortcoming though, the video clips cannot be accessed (only available on VHS within the State!).
posted by tellurian on May 12, 2009 - 10 comments

[E]ven if you are unemployed you still receive a base amount of [vacation money] from the government, the reasoning being that if you can’t go on vacation, you’ll get depressed and despondent and you’ll never get a job.
[...]
But does the cartoon image of [the Dutch system] — encapsulated in the dread slur "socialism," which is being lobbed in American political circles like a bomb — match reality? Is there, maybe, a significant upside that is worth exploring? [...] I think it’s worth pondering how the best bits might fit.

Unemployment: good for the heart and the soul. "In studies over the past 10 years, Ruhm has consistently found death rates decline during recessions and rise when the economy expands. If unemployment rises 1 percent, he estimates the death rate will fall by about half a percent."
posted by dersins on Apr 27, 2009 - 38 comments

The Cartography of Recession. Act I, The Collapse: Slate's interactive map of vanishing jobs by county, The Fed's maps of subprime mortgages, USA Today's housing bubble maps, Gini coefficients by state, budget deficits and foreclosures from CNN. Act II, Intervention: The data of Stimuluswatch, mapped, and expected job gains by state, while newspapers and the auto industry die. Act III, the Future: A terrific interactive map from the Atlantic (and accompanying article) hints at the future, showing the evolving patterns of population flows (also see the amazing New York Times immigration map), innovation, and income by city over time.
posted by blahblahblah on Apr 19, 2009 - 23 comments

[MLYT] Peter Schiff gives a talk to the Western Regional Mortgage Bankers Association, describing exactly the ongoing economic meltdown. (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). The catch? The talk was given in 2006. Listening to his bullish counterpart in parts 6-8 is a real scream. [more inside]
posted by valkyryn on Apr 16, 2009 - 23 comments

Is Silicon Valley a systemic risk? Treasury decides to treat venture capitalists like hedge funds The Obama administration wants to regulate venture capital firms to prevent systemic risks. Silicon Valley residents are scratching their heads and asking: What risks? The rest of us should ask why Washington is targeting a jewel of the American economy that had nothing to do with the housing bubble.
posted by thedailygrowl on Apr 8, 2009 - 45 comments

Look around you. On the train platform, at the bus stop, in the car pool lane: these days someone there is probably faking it, maintaining a job routine without having a job to go to.
posted by plexi on Apr 8, 2009 - 49 comments

"The Lighter Side of Pain: What’s Up with Our Global Economy" with P.J. O'Rourke. The keynote talk at the annual Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar at Washington & Lee University. Prefaced by some rambling remarks by Tom Wolfe '51 himself.
posted by inkyroom on Apr 6, 2009 - 62 comments

Although the government has committed almost 3 trillion dollars to rescuing the financial sector, testimony today revealed that 6 months after the start of TARP, basic oversight of the program is lacking (more here and here), including the failure to account for almost 80 billion dollars. Meanwhile, Congress wants to know more about the court-appointed AIG monitor, while Neal Wolin, who helped draft Gramm-Leach-Bliley, has replaced a former hedge fund manager to run TARP--raising more questions about who is overseeing the plans, and about how they are being administered.
posted by ornate insect on Mar 31, 2009 - 24 comments

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets) says Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, in the next issue of The Atlantic. He was previously Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the IMF from March 2007-August 2008. [more inside]
posted by Rafaelloello on Mar 27, 2009 - 48 comments

Dear FileFront User: We regret to inform you that due to the current economic conditions we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009. If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended. We would like to give a warm thank you to all of you who have been part of the FileFront communities we have built together. Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere “thank you” for your support over the years and wish you all the very best. Keep gaming alive, FileFront Management and Team.
posted by lazaruslong on Mar 26, 2009 - 34 comments

Twilight Of The Autocrats: Will the global economic downturn usher in a new era of democracy, or will things only get worse? [first link via]
posted by Inspector.Gadget on Mar 24, 2009 - 16 comments

Matt Taibbifilter: Among other things, the GAO report noted that the entire OTS had only one insurance specialist on staff — and this despite the fact that it was the primary regulator for the world's largest insurer! This week's MeFi stories have generally failed to explain the reasoning that caused the recession, even though Jon Stewart was basically on the mark. Now, Rolling Stone's only reporter lays it all out The Big Takeover, a typical combination of zealous snark and the overlooked, damning facts needed to clear up a ridiculously complicated story.
posted by shii on Mar 20, 2009 - 111 comments

It's scary out there. It can make you just want to hide.
posted by Joe Beese on Mar 19, 2009 - 75 comments

Which way are the winds blowing in the world today? From New Calvinism to Ecological Intelligence, here are 10 ideas that are changing the world right now.
posted by daniel_charms on Mar 18, 2009 - 14 comments

LET IT DIE: Douglas Rushkoff on the Economy.
posted by homunculus on Mar 18, 2009 - 163 comments