FOUR ARTICLES THAT PRESENT THE REPERCUSSIONS FROM THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC CRISIS.
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The repercussions from the international crisis are big so that they economically create problems in all our Greek and our Emigrant brothers. For that reason we will present to them four articles which are reported in the makes wherein January, 49 states and the District of Columbia recorded month-over-month unemployment rate increases, the Labor Department reported. All 50 states and the District of Columbia had higher rates than the previous year. In the fact in wish, in Wall Street has announced tens of thousands of layoffs since the financial crisis worsened this fall. But most firms have managed to hold on to their top "rainmakers" veteran bankers with relationships that brought in revenues for bond deals, mergers and stock offerings. And also in within minutes she had inadvertently broken all the cleanliness rules. "I wore shoes," confesses Lucas, 41. "I brought food. I changed his diaper. I didn't know those things weren't allowed.". When she took Hayden to his playgroup at a toddler center, she had to ask the little boy for directions to his class. And when she went to the pediatrician's office, the nurses were so used to seeing the nanny that they didn't recognize Lucas. Even if the mass provisional redundancies of this reprocess have now usually influenced up to the men, more from 800.000 women they have lost their work from the end 2007. For the mothers from each other, it means that, suddenly, home of mum, often for first time for a lot of years. etc..
1st Article
Four states' unemployment rates above 10%
CNNMoney.com
Wednesday March 11, 12:39 pm ET
By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com contributing writer
As unemployment soared in January, four states' jobless rates climbed higher than 10%, according to federal data released Wednesday.
In January, 49 states and the District of Columbia recorded month-over-month unemployment rate increases, the Labor Department reported. All 50 states and the District of Columbia had higher rates than the previous year.
Nonfarm job totals fell in 42 states, increased in 7 states and the District of Columbia, and were unchanged in Vermont.
Only Louisiana's jobless rate decreased. It fell to 5.1%, 0.4 percentage point lower than the previous month.
The report also included information for Puerto Rico. The U.S. commonwealth's jobless rate fell 0.5 percentage point from last month, but still stands at a whopping 13%.
The state-by-state unemployment report for January came after the government reported Friday that employers slashed 651,000 jobs across the nation in February and a revised 655,000 jobs in January.
That brought job losses over the last six months to more than 3.3 million. The nation's unemployment rate in February stood at 8.1%, its highest level in 25 years and up from 7.6% in January.
Wednesday's report shows jobless rates in several states soared in January, with four surging through the double-digit percentage level. Michigan, South Carolina, Rhode Island and California led U.S. jobless rates.
Leading states: The jobless rate in Michigan led the pack, soaring 1.4 percentage points to 11.6%. The state lost 69,000 jobs.
The auto industry downturn has hammered Detroit - the state's manufacturing sector accounted for 53,000 of these jobs lost.
Michigan's current unemployment rate is the highest since May 1984, during another rough time for automakers, said Rick Waclawek, a director at the state's labor department.
The state with the second-highest rate was South Carolina, where the jobless rate jumped 1.6 percentage points to 10.4%. South Carolina tied with North Carolina and Oregon for the largest month-over-month rate increase.
South Carolina also tied with North Carolina for the largest jobless rate increases from the previous year, at 4.7 percentage points.
The state with the third-highest unemployment rate, Rhode Island, capped a full year of consecutive job losses for the state. Its unemployment rate climbed 0.9 percentage point to 10.3%.
The unemployment rate in California, the nation's most populous state, was the fourth highest. It climbed 1.4 percentage points to 10.1%.
Lowest rates: Wyoming had the lowest unemployment rate, at 3.7%. That's a 0.5 percentage point increase from December.
North Dakota's jobless rate was second lowest. It climbed 0.9 percentage point to 4.2%.
State budget issues: The job losses have weighed on state budgets. When people lose their jobs, they pay less in personal state income tax, they spend less money, and rely more on public-funded programs.
It's a bitter cocktail for the states. At least 46 of them face shortfalls this year or next, according to Nick Johnson, director of the state fiscal project at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
States are leaning on the $140 billion included for them in President Obama's $787 billion package, which is meant to stimulate the economy and promote job growth.
But that's only about 40% of states' combined budget gaps for the remainder of the current fiscal year and the next two years, Johnson said.
Chad Stone, chief economist, said the Center is "pretty confident" the stimulus package will start to have an impact over 2009.
"Given the momentum of the downturn, this money will merely slow the decline rather than turn it around," Stone said. "It's going to be hard to see the effect even if it's working well."
http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/090311/031109_state_unemployment.html?.&.pf=career-work
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2nd Article
Bankers Rush to the Exits
by Matthew Karnitsching and Heidi N. Moore
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
provided by
The exodus has begun.
A number of prominent investment bankers are fleeing major Wall Street institutions amid a bracing economic outlook, increased public scrutiny of their pay and mounting turmoil in their own offices.
Wall Street has announced tens of thousands of layoffs since the financial crisis worsened this fall. But most firms have managed to hold on to their top "rainmakers" veteran bankers with relationships that brought in revenues for bond deals, mergers and stock offerings.
That has begun to change, as the government's intervention in the financial sector has begun to spell the end of the freewheeling, big-paycheck culture that pervaded the firms.
The past week alone has seen the announcement of several high-profile departures: Jean Manas, head of Americas M&A for Deutsche Bank; Deutsche Bank media banker Fehmi Zeko; Goldman Sachs Group partner Joseph Ravitch; and UBS managing director Jeff Sine. They follow a parade of other senior bankers who have recently left big firms, including Robert Scully at Morgan Stanley, former UBS Vice Chairman Robert Gillespie, and George Ackert, the former head of Merrill Lynch's transportation group.
In London, the exodus of talent has been no less acute than in New York. At Bank of America, for example, where bankers are grappling with both the financial downturn and a tumultuous takeover of Merrill Lynch, a raft of senior Merrill bankers have jumped ship. Many of them, including Mark Aedy, the recently named head of corporate and investment banking for Europe who was close to such blue-chip Merrill investment-banking clients as miner BHP Billiton, have left without another job lined up.
Some of the refugees are seeking to join boutiques firms, such as Evercore, Greenhill or Centerview Partners, while others are getting out of the game altogether.
For some, the motivation to leave is the same one that drew them to Wall Street in the first place: money.
In the past, many of these bankers would have been locked in place with stock options, accumulated after years of toiling from junior analyst to managing director. History is now of little concern as many firms are remade or wiped out by mergers, and stock options are mostly worthless. The market's collapse has also laid bare tensions between traders who generated most of the firms' outsize profits -- and losses -- over the past five years and the advisers who weren't risking firm capital.
"I still believe in the investment-banking business, but it has become a bit of a boat anchor, in that there doesn't seem to be a difference between an advisory banker who generates fees without capital and a [proprietary] trader whose job is like going to the casino every day," said one senior banker who is still constrained by agreements with his former firm.
Adds Alan Johnson of Wall Street compensation-consulting firm Johnson Associates, "At the moment, no one can tell bankers whether they will or won't get paid for the work they do in 2009. It will get worse the longer this goes on."
Bankers at closely held firms have been spared the ire faced by employees of banks that have received public support. But boutiques aren't a total safe haven. Bankers there are paid almost entirely by "eating what they kill," while the larger Wall Street firms have historically offered somewhat lower, but more consistent, pay.
"Deutsche Bank has and will weather the storm better than most, but at this stage in my life the private model is a better opportunity for success," Mr. Zeko said.
Reversing the brain drain could take time. Wall Street firms fired many midlevel bankers in 2001 and 2002, forcing senior bankers to stay longer. As a result, there isn't a big corps of up-and-comers to replace the veterans, many of whom are already wealthy and can easily retire.
At UBS, one banker recently complained that his staff's bonuses were sharply cut after the bank had already set aside money the prior nine months.
Survivors say these actions have poisoned the atmosphere at many banks. "I don't feel like I'm a manager when we ask for all the work and we give them no rewards," said the senior banker who recently decamped.
Dana Cimilluca contributed to this article.
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/106717/Bankers-Rush-to-the-Exits
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3rd Article
New job for laid-off moms: stay-at-home motherhood
In a recession, some professional women try out a brand new job: stay-at-home Mom
Jocelyn Noveck, AP National Writer
Tuesday March 10, 2009, 3:26 pm EDT
NEW YORK (AP) -- Soon after New Yorker Geralyn Lucas was laid off from her television job in January, she took her 2-year-old son to the playroom of her apartment building. She realized she had never been there before.
AP - Mary Quinn, 48, right, of Greenwich, Conn. is seen at her home with her daughters Paulina 11, left,
Within minutes she had inadvertently broken all the cleanliness rules. "I wore shoes," confesses Lucas, 41. "I brought food. I changed his diaper. I didn't know those things weren't allowed."
When she took Hayden to his playgroup at a toddler center, she had to ask the little boy for directions to his class. And when she went to the pediatrician's office, the nurses were so used to seeing the nanny that they didn't recognize Lucas.
Lucas and other laid-off women like her are involuntarily experiencing the life of a stay-at-home mom, and they are getting to know a lot more about the details of their children's daily existence. They are also discovering some of the things they have been missing.
When she took Hayden to his playgroup at a toddler center, she had to ask the little boy for directions to his class. And when she went to the pediatrician's office, the nurses were so used to seeing the nanny that they didn't recognize Lucas.
Even if the mass provisional redundancies of this reprocess have now usually influenced up to the men, more from 800.000 women they have lost their work from the end 2007. For the mothers from each other, it means that, suddenly, home of mum, often for first time for a lot of years.
For many of these women, unemployment has no doubt been terrifying. But for some -- particularly those who have the financial resources to ride out the storm -- it has been a precious opportunity to get to know their children a little better.
Mary Quinn, a 48-year-old mother from Greenwich, Conn., was laid off in December after 18 years at a Manhattan investment company, but a severance package has bought her some time to find a new position. After years in which her husband was the main caregiver, she is finding the time off with her children to be an unexpected blessing.
She is savoring small pleasures such as picking up her 11-year-old daughter, Paulina, from school and having a little snowball fight on the way home, or trying out new recipes with Isabelle, 17.
"As a mom, it's been amazing," says Quinn, a former vice president and portfolio administrator at Oppenheimer Capital LLC. She notes with delight how, for the first time, she is the one who gets to hear the schoolday tales that Paulina comes home with.
"I'm getting the stories from her directly now, not secondhand from my husband like before," she says. "I used to be so envious."
But as she well knows, many laid-off mothers have no time to smell the roses.
"I can't say I've seen any mothers who see being laid off as a positive thing," says Jessica Polsky, a career counselor at New York's Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. "Even if it's $10 an hour that they made, it's something, and they really needed it. They need to get out and get new jobs."
Even for women who may have a financial cushion for at least a few months, it is hard to focus on the joys of your family at a time of economic crisis, says Carol Evans, CEO of Working Mother Inc., which publishes Working Mother magazine.
"It's very difficult to juggle anxiety about the economy and pleasure with your kids," says Evans, who herself was laid off from a job 10 years ago and recalls feeling a combination of happiness -- at the possibility of a summer with her kids -- and panic. "And anxiety is at a fever pitch right now."
Milwaukee mother Shelley Ziech was laid off about a year ago, and her husband got the ax six months later. That has made Ziech's job search even more urgent, but she is still thrilled about the time she is getting to spend with Elizabeth, 12, and Martin, 19.
"It's been one of my greatest joys," says Ziech, 56, who as a sales manager was on the road several nights a week. "Before, I felt like the manager or director of a family. Now I get to do the Mom things -- making the lunches, taking my daughter to school. It's been fabulous."
Editor Sasha Emmons, 34, was laid off in January while pregnant with her second child but found a new job a month later.
"It was a mixed bag for me," says Emmons, the Brooklyn mother of a 3-year-old daughter. "On the one hand it was definitely nice, especially pregnant, to have a bit of a rest. And my daughter loved me coming to pick her up from school. It was nice to do art projects and cooking, baking and yoga class together."
On the other hand, "I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I known that everything was going to be OK financially," says Emmons, now an editor at a parenting Web site.
She also learned something from her brief experience being laid off: Financial pressures aside, she prefers working.
"I just felt kind of lost without a job," Emmons says. "Everyone talks about the mommy wars, and you always have that question as a mother: Is the grass greener on the other side? For me, the question was answered."
Lucas, the Manhattan mom, has drawn a similar conclusion, though she is grateful for the chances she didn't ever expect to have -- like the snow day she spent recently with her fourth-grade daughter and a school friend, taking them to a pizza lunch, listening to all the school gossip and spoiling them with a trip to buy candy.
As for Quinn, her younger daughter recently delighted her by announcing she had decided to forgo any summer activities -- she just wants to hang with Mom.
Once her older daughter is ensconced at college in September, Quinn hopes things will begin moving on the job front. But until then, she plans to make the most of it.
"I want to be able to look back and say that I didn't squander this time," she says.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/New-job-for-laidoff-moms-apf-14597194.html
4th Article
Sales tax rises by 1% today across state
Increase is the result of a recent California budget deal to close a $42 billion deficit.
By Bethany Clough / The Fresno Bee
Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009
The cost of almost everything rises by 1% today.
Shoppers and retailers grumbled at the state sales tax increase, negotiated as part of a recent budget deal. But most shoppers said they wouldn't change their spending habits.
Sales tax in the city of Fresno and many other communities rises to 8.975% from 7.975%.
Fresno shoppers Mary Ann Quidem, center, and Irene Dayag walk to their car Tuesday at Fashion Fair.
"How much more can you ask us to do?" asked Monica Friesen of Fresno at The Shops at River Park Tuesday.
Families are already cutting back and dealing with layoffs, she said. But like many, she said paying 1% more on many purchases wouldn't cause her to spend less.
Gas goes up. Everything goes up. You don't like it, but you don't really have a choice," she said.
It's one more piece of bad economic news for shoppers, said Rick Doyle, general manager the Ethan Allen furniture store in the Villaggio shopping center in north Fresno.
"I think it's more of a psychological thing," he said. "One more thing people feel like they're having to place on their shoulders."
He hoped it wouldn't stop shoppers from buying, however. A 1% increase on a $6,000 leather sectional sofa is an additional $60, he noted.
Scott Handley of Fresno said it wouldn't change his buying habits. "A penny won't make a difference," he said.
The increase is part of a budget deal reached last month to close a $42 billion deficit through June 2010.
The tax will stay at that higher rate until June 2011 or June 2012, depending on how residents vote on a proposal on the May 19 ballot.
While an extra penny on a $1 fly swatter isn't much, 1% has a bigger effect on large purchases, like cars.
The change spurred an uptick in business at some car dealerships in the days leading up to the increase as customers raced to make their purchases before today.
Pistoresi Chrysler Dodge Jeep in Madera was twice as busy as normal Tuesday as customers anticipated the sales tax increase, which coincided with the end of a sale by the manufacturer, said general sales manager Kevin Cavin.
The increase adds $240 to the cost of a $24,000 car, though some of that is tax deductible as part of the federal stimulus package.
Ruth Cox, a sales associate at Gary O. furniture in Clovis, said shoppers who can afford to buy furniture probably won't balk at the increase. The added tax on a $3,500 wall-mounted Murphy bed is $35, she noted. "In the grand scheme of things, if I can't afford the extra $35, I probably can't afford the item," she said.
But when given a choice, local voters recently made their disdain for tax increases clear. Clovis residents overwhelmingly voted down a one-cent sales tax increase March 3. Measure A would have raised nearly $13 million a year to restore city services that have been cut over the past two years.
The tax increase comes at the worst possible time for many families, said National Retail Federation vice president of government affairs Craig Shearman. He noted that the NRF did not take a position on the issue.
"This is a time when consumers are stretched very thin, and they're trying to get as much mileage out of every dollar as possible," he said. "When you take another penny out of that dollar, it imposes that much more on working families."
It hits low-income families particularly hard, because they are more likely to spend money on necessities rather than optional purchases, he said.
http://www.fresnobee.com/business/story/1300130.html
