No friday fun this week – given what’s happening with the economy, I thought I’d try something a little different. Take 12 minutes of your life and watch the movie below. Better than anything I’ve seen it nicely summarizes what’s happened to our financial markets over the last couple of years.
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
…but I think I know why they’re so anxious to pass it. Check out this graph of job losses over on speaker.gov:
job losses in the last 3 recessions in the US
Focus your eye on that green line. If things continue on that pace there’ll be mass protests in the streets before 2009 ends – no wonder the politicians are in a frenzy. Cross your fingers folks, we’re in for an uncomfortable year.
I’m obsessed with the economy these days, to the point where I occasionally drive Susan a bit nuts at dinner chattering about it, but it’s pretty clear we’re entering into a significant recession and possibly worse. Evidence supporting the worse angle would be this article on engadget, , where they report that Black Friday sales declined… for the first time ever. There’s perhaps no greater indicator of the collapse of US consumer culture than this, folks. For the record, sales were down by 8%, which hardly seems terrible until you consider companies were already forecasting lower sales to begin with, to the point where companies like Circuit City already were facing bankruptcy. Another way to express it would be: if the black friday sales can’t get gluttunous US consumers to pull out their walletts, what can?