Tiger ready to quit golf to save his marriage – The Sun
Matt Taibbi on how Wall Street insiders crafted Obama’s economic policies
For feds, more get 6-figure salaries – USA Today
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.
Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.
If You Don’t Buy a House Now, You’re Stupid or Broke – BusinessWeek
David Rosenberg’s 2010 Outlook “The Recession Is Really A Depression” – Zero Hedge
As households begin a assess the shock and what it means for their retirement needs, the impact of this shocking loss of wealth on consumer spending patterns in the future is likely going to be very significant. Frugality is the new fashion and likely to stay that way for years as attitudes toward discretionary spending, homeownership and credit undergo a secular shift towards prudence and conservatism.
Downturn keeping Americans’ wanderlust in check – The Washington Post
About 12 percent of Americans moved in each of the past two years, down from 13 to 14 percent a year during the first part of this decade. Historical trends show a more precipitous drop. In any given year throughout the 1990s, 16 to 17 percent of Americans changed homes. Throughout the 1950s and in the early 1960s, it was one in five.
On equity “cushions” and negative equity – The Mess That Greenspan Made
Retail Sales in U.S Increase More Than Forecast – Bloomberg
Retail Sales: It Really Was Gasoline! – ClusterStock
Much of today’s positive +1.3% November retail sales growth was indeed caused by a huge 6% jump in gasoline station sales, as shown below…
White House Loan Modification Plan Falls Flat – The Washington Independent
The Obama administration’s signature effort remains its $75 billion Making Home Affordable program, which was set up to aid as many as 4 million homeowners. But Making Home Affordable has in most ways been a crushing disappointment, housing advocates say.
At the beginning of this year lenders on their own were doing far more permanent loan modifications than the government has been able to accomplish since rolling out its program in April…
Wells Fargo Foreclosures on Farm, Ignores the Animals – Rhode Island News
Guy Settipane, the lawyer for Dan MacKenzie, said his client became concerned Tuesday morning after neighbors described chaotic conditions on the property on Snake Hill Road. He said MacKenzie became alarmed when he went to the site and saw, from a distance, “total strangers walking off with his animals.”
But the lawyer said his main concern was for the animals — including cats, dogs, chickens, pigs, horses, sheep, goats and others — that he said had been left to fend for themselves despite assurances by Wells Fargo that it had arranged to have the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals take care of them.
Tuesday, RISPCA president Dr. Ernest Finocchio confirmed some of MacKenzie’s fears, saying that the bank said it didn’t want the organization’s help. When he visited the site Tuesday, he said that at least some of the animals — eight horses and two 800-pound pigs — had not been given any water even though he had been told that they had.
The buckets next to each stall were still empty in mid-afternoon, and little pointers he had placed on the doors to show whether the stalls were opened were found to be undisturbed, he said. But the clearest sign that the horses had not been watered was when he took a five-gallon bucket and placed it in front of each horse.
Seven of the eight horses drank up the water with no hesitation, an indication to him that they had not been given any water in a long time. He and Joseph Warycha, RISPCA’s animal cruelty officer, gave each horse a bucket of water and some hay.
Violence erupts after credit collapse – The Mortgage Insider
Home Front: Forecast as grim as 2009′s – Home Front
Joblessness plan revamps rules on bank bailouts – The Washington Post
The Obama administration plans to channel money from the government’s massive financial bailout program to small businesses as part of an effort to limit the political and economic damage of high unemployment.
Yield Curve Steepest Since 1980; Hard Times Ahead in 2010 – Mish
December 11, 2009
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