EconomicCrisis.US

As the financial crisis of 2008-2009 slowly passes into history, the first round of autopsies is beginning, with congressional committees looking for culprits, and everyone from business leaders to economists to the proverbial man on the street grappling with answers as to what precisely caused the meltdown. It is now almost cliché to speak of how the so-called “Great Recession” nearly brought down the global financial system—how it was the worst crisis since the Great Depression and how the world has changed dramatically as a result. Clichés can be compact truisms, but in this case, what’s most striking about the world isn’t how much things have changed as a result of the crisis but how little.
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President Barack Obama warned Thursday that the U.S. economy was running up to 8 million jobs short of where it should be, and that filling even part of the hole would take fresh action from his administration.

“You’ve got essentially a 7 million to 8 million gap between where jobs should be for relatively full employment and where we are,” Obama said in a White House interview with the Free Press and USA Today. “That is my greatest fear … we don’t close that gap.”

In a 25-minute discussion in the White House Map Room just hours before he hosted a jobs summit with business, government and policy leaders, Obama touted the need to balance spending prudence with more spending to stoke an economy still prone to a “double-dip” recession without it. He said the rescues this year of General Motors and Chrysler and other steps were needed to stabilize the economy.
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The likely default of the emirate of Dubai on its debt is a shot heard round the world – and perhaps heard nowhere as loudly as here in California. As with other countries that rode an unsustainable real estate bubble to overindebtedness and are now facing financial crisis – places like Greece, Hungary, Latvia and Ireland are just some examples – California faces its own looming debt crisis.

The collapse of Dubai is especially significant for California. Dubai was framed as a financial paradise for the wealthy and the celebrity set, built on real estate borrowing, unsustainable use of natural resources (including water), and exploitation of a laboring class that lacked many basic democratic rights and certainly wasn’t participating in the wealth creation.
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I made my annual trip to some area stores this morning to see what bargains shoppers are picking up for Black Friday.

I started at Walmart White Marsh and it was obvious last year’s trampling of a security guard at one of its Long Island stores had an impact. There were employees everywhere. And shoppers lined up for items at various locations throughout the store rather than in one big mass outside. It was pretty orderly. I didn’t stick around to see if there was chaos once the bargains were available at 5 a.m.

Some shoppers showed up yesterday afternoon to get in line at the Best Buy in White Marsh. Laptops and flat screen televisions seemed to be the big items there. The laptop section was the most crowded in the store. There were still huge stacks of Wii and Xbox video game systems when I left at about 5:30 a.m.
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