Earn What You Spend

Nouriel Roubini joins the ranks of those concerned about the drop in consumer spending [via Clusterstock].  It has certainly occupied my mind of late (see here and here most recently).  Roubini gives us twenty reasons why we are seeing the American consumer drastically pull back in their spending.  The first reason of course catches my eye as the [...]

More confirmation of the long road ahead came out this morning: 
Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department
of Labor reported today. October’s [...]

Yesterday, expected but still unwelcome news hit the market: real GDP fell by .3 percent in the third quarter of 2008.  According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis:
the decrease in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected negative contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), residential fixed investment, and equipment and software that were largely offset by [...]

We’re almost certainly in a recession, and it is shaping up to be one of the worst in years (certainly the worst in my lifetime).  So every economist, money manager, investor, and consumer is now trying to prognosticate what will happen next.  When will we have reached the bottom of this recession and begin the [...]

Yesterday’s New York Times asked an important question that I think is worth repeating:
Have We Learned Enough? 
We’re in a recession, undoubtedly.  (True, the NBER hasn’t declared it officially, but they issue statements after the fact, when all the evidence is in.)  Could we sink further, into a depression?  With all the bad news on the [...]

Are salaries across the nation set to fall next?  That’s what David Leonhardt of the NYTimes thinks.  The next slump is 
likely to revolve around the worst slump in worker pay since — you knew this was coming — the Great Depression. … income for the median household — the one in the dead middle of the [...]