The Queen, reported the Daily Mail, was wearing a speckled cream suit and matching hat. Her Majesty was at the London School of Economics, listening to a professor, Luis Garicano, talk about the credit crunch. “It’s awful,” she said suddenly. “Why did nobody see it coming?” For three years I have pondered the Queen’s question, [...]
Tag: recession
December 16, 2011
December 8, 2011
Traffic deaths trended down again in 2010, says DOT
Washington (CNN) — Some 32,885 people died on the nation’s roadways in 2010 — a number that, while slightly higher than preliminary figures released in April, shows the downward trend in traffic deaths is continuing, now reaching low levels not seen since 1949, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported Thursday. The decline came despite the [...]
November 13, 2011
US searches for a cultural response to economic hardship
By any standards, watching Jeff Nichols’s much lauded film Take Shelter is a haunting experience. Its central character, Curtis LaForche, a working-class Midwesterner trying to hold on to his family, job and sanity in rural Ohio, is increasingly plagued by apocalyptic dreams that seem to be leaching into the real world. The audience watches LaForche’s [...]
November 10, 2011
New Greek PM Says Country Is at ‘Crucial Crossroads’
Greece’s newly named caretaker prime minister, Lucas Papademos, says his country is at a “crucial crossroads” and it won’t be easy to fix the huge problems facing the Greek economy. Thursday, Greece’s feuding political leaders named Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank, to be the country’s interim leader until a national [...]
November 8, 2011
Obama Brings Economic, Security Assurances on Asia-Pacific Trip
President Barack Obama departs this week for Hawaii where he will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, formed in 1989 to improve economic cooperation and liberalize trade among its member nations. Mr. Obama brings economic and security assurances on his nine-day trip that also includes Australia and the East Asia Summit in Bali. The 21 [...]
November 8, 2011
France Unveils Tough Austerity Plan
The French government unveiled tough new austerity measures Monday as fears grow that Europe’s fiscal problems may touch new members of the 17-nation eurozone. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon warned that billions of euros in spending cuts and tax hikes amount to some of the toughest in more than half a century, as he unveiled [...]
September 30, 2011
Study: Largest U.S. group of poor kids is now Latino
Los Angeles (CNN) — For the first time in U.S. history, the largest single group of poor children in any racial or ethnic category is Hispanic, according to a new survey. Calling it “a negative milestone” in Hispanics’ explosive growth in the United States, the Pew Hispanic Center study said in 2010, 37.3% of poor [...]
September 24, 2011
Is the US already in a double-dip recession, as George Soros says? | Poll
Polly Toynbee: Ed Miliband: to dodge the rocks, be bold and speak your mind
September 18, 2011
Worlds apart – the neighbourhoods that sum up a divided America
They are barely a mile apart, separated by a few gritty streets and a thin muddy stretch of water known as the Harlem river. They are in the same city and have experienced the same recession. But New Yorkers living in the city’s 14th and 16th congressional districts – electoral districts with populations of around [...]
September 17, 2011
For Jobs, It’s War
Even so, the president’s jobs bill is already being nickeled and dimed from the right — and the left — even though it is only throwing nickels and dimes at the problem to begin with. But at least it’s a start, even if a long-overdue one. To understand just how overdue it is, one need [...]
September 17, 2011
Why Gloomy Consumers May Spend Anyway
Americans are in a foul mood. Recent confidence readings show that consumers are as gloomy as they were at the worst moments of the recession, in late 2008 and early 2009. Those were apocalyptic times. Companies were axing jobs by the thousands. Stocks were in a nosedive. The government was launching rescue measures most people [...]