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Archive for January, 2009

Economy is Getting Worse

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Economists expect an already deep recession to get even worse in 2009, according to a survey released Monday.

Companies will lay off more workers and hoard more cash during the next 12 months, according to the National Association for Business Economics survey, a quarterly take from a panel of economists at private-sector companies in various industries. A vast majority of the 105 economists polled believe the country’s gross domestic product will continue to sink in 2009.

If business conditions indeed worsen during the year, they will be sinking from already historic lows. The survey’s measures of consumer demand, profit margins and capital expenditures all hit their lowest-ever levels in January’s edition of the 27-year old survey.

The Job Market is Worse Than You Think

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The unemployment rate rose to 7.2% in December, the highest it has been since 1993. That’s obviously not good news.

But the job market might be in even worse shape than this number suggests. There’s a growing number of market experts who think that the government’s employment statistics don’t accurately paint the true picture of the job market.

Now to be fair, the government also does report a so-called underemployment rate, which includes some part-time workers as well as people who have given up looking for work during the past year. That figure is now 13.5%.

But one prominent critic, John Williams, an economist and publisher of the research site Shadowstats.com, said that when you take into account the large number of people who have been so discouraged by job market woes that they have not been actively looking for work for more than a year, the unemployment rate is actually as high as 17.5%

MI Jobless Rate Hits Levels Not Seen Since 1984

Michigan hit double-digit unemployment last month, the highest monthly rate since 1984.

The December jobless rate jumped to 10.6 percent, a full percentage point increase from November, according to monthly data released Wednesday by the state Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth.

Michigan lost 59,000 jobs — with cuts across all sectors of the economy — in December, the highest monthly total for the year, as the state’s wobbly manufacturing base collided with a flat-lined national economy.

Today was a great day for America. We witnessed the peaceful transfer of power and a great shift in ideology.

The failed policies of the past administration are finally over.  A whole new administration is entering the White House.

It’s time to look forward and put fear behind us.

Pilot is Biggest Hero as Jet Plunges into the Hudson River

A US Airways jetliner with 155 people aboard lost power in both engines, possibly from striking birds, after taking off from La Guardia Airport on Thursday afternoon. The pilot ditched in the icy Hudson River and all on board were rescued by a flotilla of converging ferries and emergency boats, the authorities said.

What might have been a catastrophe in New York — one that evoked the feel if not the scale of the Sept. 11 attack — was averted by a pilot’s quick thinking and deft maneuvers, and by the nearness of rescue boats, a combination that witnesses and officials called miraculous.