September 2008

January 2009

June 2009

Infographic provided by TIP Strategies

George from InflationUS goes out to real estate development zones that have been abandoned in Southern California.

“This is what the future will look like. Bombed-out suburbia converted to public housing with the government as the communist landlord for the rental serfs because the mega-wealthy don’t want it, they keep only the good assets for themselves. People need to see through the corporate/government veil to understand how they are being manipulated.”

These are the properties the banks so desperately want to get off of their books.

New York State unemployment rates are at a 25 year high, like many other states in the country. Historically, the New York state unemployment rate is much below the national averages. However, according to the NYS Department Of Labor the August 2009 New York state unemployment rate is 9.0 percent, compared to a national average of 9.7%. In Aug 2008 only one year ago, the state had an unemployment rate of 5.7 percent.

Some fear that the governments official statistics may be too conservative and that the actual unemployment rates may be much higher.

New York City jobs have been hammered by the complete collapse of the financial and banking industries in 2008. Of course, New York state unemployment could be much worse. After all, some states such as Michigan have double-digit unemployment numbers.

“Government cannot produce wealth, only redistribute it.”

New York State Job Overview

The most recent labor market overview data shows that the only jobs being created are in the government sector or the service sector. While every other productive sector is rapidly shedding jobs. This should be a clear indicator that we have not achieved any measure of recovery yet and the recession is still marching forward at an unstoppable pace.

You must realize that in order to pull ourselves out of this economic crisis we need to start producing real jobs. The government is stretched thin and while we welcome new job opportunities for the unemployed, government bureaucratic jobs are non-productive. To get the economy back on pace we need manufacturing, commodities and infrastructure.

Bill Sonner, 47, used to be known as ruthless on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. As WSJ’s Mary Pilon reports, this Wall Street refugee has found a new passion as an ice cream man since being laid off.

Source: Washington Times

Senate Democrats approved a measure 52-45 to spend millions of dollars putting up road signs to highlight where the stimulus money was being spent.

“Why on earth would you want to hide from the American people the fact that the recovery package we passed is putting people to work?” asked Sen. Barbara Boxer

But Sen. Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who tried to excise the funds, called his amendment a no-brainer. He said it’s common sense to get rid of tens of millions of dollars in spending.

“These are self-congratulatory signs; they’re political signs. They’re so that lawmakers can pat themselves on the back,” he said. “But these signs cost money. Actually, when you add them all up, they cost a lot of money.”

Washington politicians have clearly lost their mind. Every 15,000 dollars that goes up in road signs could have easily supported a struggling family for a year. However Senate Democrats found it to be more important to “let the people know” they are fixing the economy than it is to actually fix it.

As many as 1.5 million set to lose jobless benefits by the end of 2009. Many people are becoming desperate.

58-year-old has Karen Inbody of Elkhart, IN has just about three weeks of benefits to figure out how she will pay for food and shelter.

“I’d shovel horse poop,” she says wearily. “I haven’t even found one of those jobs available.”

In the first big wave, some 540,000 are expected to fall out of the program by the end of September, according to the nonprofit National Employment Law Project.

“Every state is going to experience a substantial increase in people exhausting their benefits,” says Chris Owen, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based worker advocacy group. “That means more people who will not be able to pay their mortgages, and who will not be able to shop and buy things. It will be a blow for the national economy, and for state and local economies.”

For many in this situation, there are few obvious places to turn. Short of qualifying for another government program, most rely on family, friends, and help of churches that run food pantries and assist with other emergency needs.

Despite some recent signs that the unemployment situation is improving, the odds of actually getting a new job are grim.

Federal statistics indicate that there were more than five times as many people seeking jobs in the United States in June as there were positions available. In especially hard-hit areas like Elkhart, where the unemployment rate is 16.7 percent — compared to 9.4 percent nationwide — the odds against job seekers are even tougher.

With the clock running out on her benefits, Karen Inbody is weighing her options.

She’s already borrowed some money from her family, and does not want to ask for more

Inbody owes $600 a month on her house, a simple gray bungalow on Elkhart’s historic Bank Street. She fears that without some new source of income, she will lose it.

“Sell my house, rent out my house?” she says, running through some scenarios. She adds: “I could stand on a street corner, but those are all taken too.”

On September 11, 2001 2,974 people were murder in an attack on the world trade center.

Since 9/11 thousands of first responders have died from asbestos and chemical poisoning.

The majority of rescue workers have been denied the most basic health care assistance from the U.S. Government.

Today 50,000 9/11 workers are dying from lung related illness.

Many have only a few months left to live.

Hundreds of car dealerships in New York are pulling out of the “Cash for Clunkers” program today citing fears that the government may not be able to properly reimburse them. The program offers up to $4,500 dollars per vehicle for customers purchasing a more fuel efficient car or truck. However the dealerships must pay the rebates out of pocket, and then must wait to be reimbursed by the government. The program has been and administrative nightmare so far, the initial funding for the program was burned through in only 4 days.

“The government needs to move the system forward and they need to start paying these dealers,” said Mark Schienberg, the group’s president. “This is a cash-dependent business.”

Schienberg said the group’s dealers have been repaid for only about 2 percent of the clunkers deals they’ve made so far.

Many dealers have said they are worried they won’t get repaid at all, while others have waited so long to get reimbursed they don’t have the cash to fund any more rebates, Schienberg said.

“The program is a great program in the sense that it’s creating a lot of floor traffic that a lot of dealers haven’t seen in a long time,” he said.

“But it’s in the hands of this enormous bureaucracy and regulatory agency,” he added. “If they don’t get out of their own way, this program is going to be a huge failure.”

The program is administered by the Department of Transportation. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Wednesday that dealers will be repaid for the clunkers deals they have completed.

“I know dealers are frustrated. They’re going to get their money,” LaHood told reporters. He said the Obama administration would soon announce how much longer the $3 billion car incentive program will last.

Through early Wednesday, auto dealers have made clunkers deals worth $1.81 billion, resulting in 435,102 new car sales, according to the DOT.

More @breibart.com

From Yahoo Finance

Fannie Mae plans to tap $11 billion in new government aid after posting another massive quarterly loss as the taxpayer bill from the housing market bust keeps growing.

The mounting price tag for the rescue of Fannie and its goverment-sponsored sibling, Freddie Mac, is surpassed only by insurer American International Group Inc., which has received $182.5 billion in financial support from the government so far.

Fannie Mae’s new request for $10.7 billion from the Treasury Department will bring the total for Fannie and Freddie to nearly $96 billion. Freddie is expected to report its quarterly results on Friday.

The government has pledged up to $400B in aid for the two companies, which play a vital role in the mortgage market by purchasing loans from banks and selling them to investors. They have been under government control since last Sept, when their collapse helped set off the financial crisis.

Together, Washington-based Fannie and McLean, Va.-based Freddie own or guarantee almost 31 million home loans worth about $5.4 trillion. That’s about half of all U.S home mortgages.

With assets of that size, “it’s hard for their problems to be small,” said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics, a consulting firm that advises financial institutions.

Fannie Mae posted a second-quarter loss of $15.2 billion, or $2.67 per share, including $411 million in dividend payouts. That compares with a loss of $2.6 billion, or $2.54 per share, in the year-ago period.

“We are dependent on the continued support of Treasury in order to continue operating our business,” Fannie Mae said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Thursday.

The results were driven by $18.8 billion in credit losses due to declining housing market conditions, made worse by rising unemployment. Nearly 4 percent of the loans Fannie Mae owns or guarantees were delinquent as of June 30, up from 1.4 percent a year earlier.

The two companies lowered their standards for borrowers during the real estate boom and are reeling from the bust. High-risk loans, now defaulting at a record pace, have come back to haunt the companies. Worse still, the recession is causing formerly reliable homeowners with good credit to default.

The Obama administration is expected to unveil its plans for Fannie and Freddie early next year. Options being considered include keeping the companies private, winding down their operations, merging them into a federal agency or separating out their bad mortgage assets into a new company backed by the government.

Meanwhile, the head of the federal agency that regulates Fannie and Freddie Mac, James Lockhart, is stepping down at the end of the month. Edward DeMarco, chief operating officer of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, was named acting director on Thursday.

DeMarco, 49, has worked at the agency since October 2006. Before that, he worked at the Social Security Administration and the Treasury Department.

On the left is an image from a work site back in 1939. On the right is 2009. Today we can see very similar and troubling trends. While stimulus projects go to frivolous pet projects for Senators and Congressmen, work sites across the country are shutting down.

The signs are all to similar “No Jobs, Keep Moving.”

WASHINGTON – The White House said Thursday it was reviewing what has turned out to be a wildly popular “cash for clunkers” program amid concerns the $1 billion budget for rebates for new auto purchases may have been exhausted in only a week.

“Cash for Clunkers may have run out of cash, but America’s consumers haven’t run out of clunkers. We’re going to work with the Obama administration to keep this wildly successful program going until it reaches its goal of helping take 1 million gas guzzlers off the road”

The decision to suspend the plan came after auto dealers warned the government today that it was in danger of losing track of how many trades had actually been made.

The plan offering owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more efficient vehicle has proven wildly popular, with 22,782 trades certified by federal officials since Monday. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told dealers Wednesday that a vast majority of transactions submitted were being rejected for incomplete or illegible paperwork.

More about this story can be found here