EconomicCrisis.US

U.S. stocks gained for a second day, trimming losses at the end of the market’s worst year since the Great Depression, as fewer Americans filed for jobless benefits and the Treasury said it will expand aid to the car industry.

Macy’s Inc. and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. climbed more than 9 percent as initial unemployment claims dropped by 94,000 last week to the lowest level in almost two months. Lear Corp., the world’s second-biggest maker of vehicle seats, jumped 23 percent after the Treasury said it may provide funds to more companies in the auto industry. Stocks in Europe and Asia advanced, paring the biggest annual declines on record for regional indexes.
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Oil slid below $39 a barrel on Wednesday, closing out its worst year ever after falling 60 percent, with a rapid reversal in the economic outlook having brought it crashing back from a mid-year record high.

Fresh sets of dismal data from the United States on Tuesday added pessimism that oil demand in 2009 will suffer further, countering any support from Middle East tensions and hopes for another Saudi output cut.

Analysts forecast an average of $49.00 a barrel for U.S. crude in the first quarter, and an average of $58.48 for next year, down $14.00 from their previous forecasts, the latest Reuters poll showed.
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The current economic crisis has waged a particularly severe attack on the Black middle-class in the United States, experts say.

For African-Americans, “2008 was not a good year,” said Algernon Austin, director of Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute, “and unfortunately, it looks like things will get worse.”

The adage that when America sneezes, Black America catches a cold has held true, making it almost inevitable that African Americans would bear the brunt of the country’s financial woes, economists say.
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When the National Bureau of Economic Research announced Dec. 1 that the United States had been, officially, in a recession for a year, it confirmed what many Americans already suspected.

The signs had been there: foreclosures. A decline in home prices. Companies cutting budgets and jobs.

The country began 2008 embroiled in the sub-prime mortgage mess, and the bad economic news continued in a domino effect. Financial giants such as investment bank Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers tumbled, the latter filing for bankruptcy in September. In that same month, Washington Mutual collapsed, making headlines as the largest bank failure in our country’s history. The government began responding to the economic crisis, loaning money to individual giants in the mortgage and insurance industries. Then Congress passed a whopping $700 billion bailout for financial industries, investing in banks, automakers and insurers. By November, General Motors, Chrysler and Ford execs were back in Washington asking for more government loans.
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