Tag Archives: economy

generation who?

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this post is in response to an article i read on Time.com.

…the fundamentally good lessons of the Reagan age — entrepreneurialism mostly unbound, proud Americanism — will endure. The babies will not be thrown out with the bathwater.

from The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America? by Kurt Andersen

when i was in high school, probably around the time i read Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for the first time, i used to wonder about the generation of people born just before WWI. i assumed they would have been too young to have been really affected by the war (especially with the lack of ever-present media back then), would have blossomed into adolescence and the teenage years in the roaring 20s, and then come into adulthood as the great depression dawned. i wondered what it was like for that generation — to have basked in such utter decadence and hedonism, and then to be slapped back with a desperate reality.

i think i felt most sympathetic for them because it seemed as though they had no background to prepare them for the bleakness in the 1930s and, to some extent, the 40s. not that anyone did, i guess, really; but if you had been cogniscent of the world around you in WWI you knew something of suffering. if your first real experiences of life were the roaring 20s, how could you expect to be braced for the great depression?

anyway i guess it just got me thinking, because i remember after 9/11 hearing someone call the 1990s “the roaring ’90s” and so maybe in a sense my generation (a tad bit too young to be generation x, and a tad bit too old to be considered the millenial generation) is in a similar situation to those who first tasted life in the 1920s. not, of course, to the same degree — obviously the suffering of the 1930s and even 40s far surpasses anything i’ve ever experienced. it just got me thinking is all. it’s such a switch from the lifestyle we grew up waiting for.

anyway the article is good. this post feels a bit incoherent.

AIG

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“There was a daylong rush to the microphones on Capitol Hill — a bipartisan campaign to out-outrage each other.” –Laurie Kellman, AP news

at least we know our senators see this nightmare for what it really is – a chance to prove that partisanship (that same partisanship that the people have shown themselves so clearly in favor of) is still alive and well.

am i the only person who thinks this would have been a great chance for congress to show us that, really, they care more about us than each other? oh, i know its not true, but really, none of their political masterminds thought of spinning this that way? seriously? none of them? really you think the average american is going to blame Dems or Republicans more right now? we just want the money back. grow up. i’m disgusted. is Stephen Colbert leg-wrestling Rep. Jason Chaffetz really all that Congress has to offer? (not that that wasn’t terribly entertaining. Props to Chaffetz.)

 

(here’s an article that kind of traces what’s going on with AIG and the bailout money – how it started, where things went wrong, etc. a good overview).

stopping the buck

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this is a pretty interesting article (with great photoshopping — you’ll love it!). Time Magazine (time.com) counts up the 25 people to blame for the current financial crisis. and you get to vote on them — woot.

because the article tells who the people are, who they’re associated with, and what they did wrong, i thought it was a good way to learn about what went wrong in a lot of corners — and, don’t be shocked, american consumers made the list, too.

this just in

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have i told you this already?

this just in from the dean’s office (not a direct quote per se): 

H–  is not going to have lay-offs! and don’t believe the rumors about a hiring freeze — it’s a bit of a hiring frost, if you will, but it’s not a freeze!!

a hiring frost– a little worse than a hiring cold front, but not as bad as a hiring freeze.

oh, the comfort we find in the economic-crisis times!

le chômage

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Gallup.com reports: “American workers continue to report a deteriorating job situation at the companies where they work, with Gallup’s hiring measure for Nov. 14-16 showing that 26% of employees say their company is letting people go, 26% say that their company is hiring, and 43% say the hiring situation at their company has not changed.”

So. according to this, the same amount of companies firing folks are hiring folks. and the rest of the surveyed companies show no change at all. i know it’s a bad situation out there (I really do sympathize), but this write up hardly sounds like a “deteroriating job situation.” doesn’t it sound more like equilibrium and the status quo? probably need some new stats. or some new writers.