What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends.
While Gallup data for the month also show a slight moderation in job loss, this is not sufficient to take up the slack for a 35% decline in the rate of job creation compared to a year ago.
Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness, a new study shows. The study data, published online Thursday in The American Journal of Medicine, likely understate the full scope of the problem because the data were collected before the current economic crisis. In 2007, medical problems contributed to 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by about 50 percent.
At U-Exchange.com, a Washington-based barter site, the flagging economy sent page views skyrocketing so quickly, the 4-year-old business had to upgrade its servers twice to accommodate interest, according to founder John C. Moore.
Rep. Alan Grayson asks the Federal Reserve Inspector General about the trillions of dollars lent or spent by the Federal Reserve and where it went, and the trillions of off balance sheet obligations. Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman responds that the IG does not know and is not tracking where this money is.
Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to march through the streets of France today as the traditional May Day rallies become a focus point for anger over factory closures, job cuts and Nicolas Sarkozy's handling of the economic crisis.
The myth of the single bubble behind The Great Unwind -- manifest as the global credit crunch -- has essentially been dumped in the last few months and subprime mortgage default, a USD 1.5 trillion challenge within the USD 5 trillion mortgage based assets envelope, is seen as a component of a much larger overwhelming global crisis with unprecedented scale, speed, severity and synchronicity. The global crisis has wiped a staggering USD 50 trillion off the value of financial assets currency, equity and bond markets worldwide last year, according to the Asian Development Bank. The truth that there are as many as eight bubbles at play...
With the difficult housing market and rising number of foreclosures leaving more and more homes standing vacant, some companies are seeking meticulous residents to live in the houses and keep them from going to rack and ruin. Homes sell at a faster rate when they're occupied. This unique solution to a growing problem allows people like 49-year-old Rose Duran to live in a dream house for little rent, but with the condition she can be asked to move out at any time.
Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi have long grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and that the immigrants were starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions.
Friction between the union and immigrant workers, along with a tipoff at an electrical manufacturing plant, boiled over this week into the biggest workplace immigration raid in the nation's history.
![Debt in the USA, 1980 to present [graph].](http://market-ticker.denninger.net/uploads/Z12009-09/CumulativeDebt80-Present.png){kind=link}
