Wall St. has created a new list of brands that may disappear [in 2011], which includes:

Readers Digest, Kia Motors, Dollar Thrifty, Zale, Blockbuster, T-Mobile, BP, RadioShack, Merrill Lynch and Moody's.

Several of those deserve to disappear, especially Blockbuster and Radio Shack. Ignoring threats from competition like Netflix and Best Buy, they continued to overcharge their customers and treat them like crap.

Blockbuster came in, drove the little guys out of the market, became arrogant, refused to change when they desperately needed to, and now are in dire straits.

Tough.

Some of these closings are a sign of the times, don't you think? Reader's Digest has been around forever, but with modern technology (i.e. internet)people get their info on-line. I use to subscribe the the daily newspaper until a number of years ago when I got a computer. I use to buy the tv guide weekly until cable tv showed all the listings.

Oh, and remember when getting a job at a post office would be more or less a guaranteed good job with great benefits? Even more "ancient" sounding, I have a cousin who retired from the phone company a few years back. She was a telephone operater for 30 years. Another dying profession.

Truth is, some of these jobs simply won't be back and/or if they stay around they'll be downsized considerably, all in the name of progress I guess. Times they are a-changing.

TIS

Things are tough all over. I know some people that are very close to me that are in the same position. Some of them have been all along trying very hard to find work; others not so much. It's frustrating because I can definitely understand the impulse to tell grown people (especially men, is that sexist?? ) to find a job but on the other hand there simply aren't the jobs to be had. And there's a good argument that cutting benefits at this point will make it worse for the entire economy.


CINCINNATI (Reuters) – Deborah Coleman lost her unemployment benefits in April, and now fears for millions of others if the Senate does not extend aid for the jobless.

"It's too late for me now," she said, fighting back tears at the Freestore Foodbank in the low-income Over-the-Rhine district near downtown Cincinnati. "But it will be terrible for the people who'll lose their benefits if Congress does nothing."

For nearly two years, Coleman says she has filed an average of 30 job applications a day, but remains jobless.

"People keep telling me there are jobs out there, but I haven't been able to find them."

Coleman, 58, a former manager at a telecommunications firm, said the only jobs she found were over the Ohio state line in Kentucky, but she cannot reach them because her car has been repossessed and there is no bus service to those areas.

After her $300 a week benefits ran out, Freestore Foodbank brokered emergency 90-day support in June for rent. Once that runs out, her future is uncertain.

"I've lost everything and I don't know what will happen to me," she said.
Hard Times Unemployment

Lilo, It's heartbreaking to read such stories. Since real estate is so slow, I've been sending out resumes for the last year. I've had only three interviews. I've only been offered one of those jobs, and it paid $12 an hour. As a former VP, I felt a tad overqualified for that one. Luckily, I still make some money in real estate, although my income has easily been cut by 40%, but at least I have an income. Also, I'm not the only one in my family working, thank goodness.

I don't what to tell people when they can't find work. One of my clients pointed out his fork lift operator. He told me that the guy was the husband of their bookkeeper and a former bigwig from Bear Sterns. Since the Wall Street Meltdown, he has been unable to find a full-time job.

I was at Starbucks up in Bronxville this morning. The "barista" told me that more and more middle-aged people are applying for jobs for little more than minimum wage. But they offer a very good health plan.

Also, this summer, my son, who is 14 and my youngest, started his first job at Pathmark. I was picking him up the other night and started bullshitting with the night manager. He told me that actual fights inside the bottle redemption room are becoming almost commonplace. Sadly, people are fighting, literally, over nickels and dimes. And while beverage sales are no higher this summer than any other summer, bottle and can returns are up like 300 PERCENT. Meaning that people who never recycled before are doing it to put an extra dollar or two in their shopping kitty.

Signs of the times .

PB, we put our recycling out at the curb on Thursday nights. Before the town shows up to take it, people are going through it and taking the bottles that can be returned. It's a little freakish to see people essentially going through your curbside containers.

I live in a condo in a nice area. We have the large trash bins for each building. When I lived in a home, we had to separate bottles/papers but not here for some reason. There are signs by trash bins saying there is a $100 fine for anyone going thru the dumpster. Our association encourages us to call security should we see it occur.

A couple weeks ago I was bringing a bag of trash to the dumpster and what do I see? Literally, legs (upside down) coming out of the dumpster. Somebody was going thr the trash. Turned out it was a woman and when she saw/heard me coming she quickly stood upright and kept saying "I'm sorry mam, I'm sorry." She immediately left. I can't tell you how surprised I was to see this and yet I couldn't bring myself to call security. There is just something so pathetic and sad seeing someone literally going thru your garbage.

TIS

These aren't homeless people, TIS. They're actually quite organized. They pull up in a decent-looking station wagon with various containers in the back and sort out the bottles. Now that NY has a deposit on water bottles as well, they're income went up significantly!

SB, when I lived in Suffern (NY for you outsiders), we had a local guy on one of those motorized wheelchair-scooters who would go around the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning collecting cans from our recycle bins. One morning he woke me up when he spilled his big plastic bag of cans in front of my house.

Who is getting a raise? I know I haven't gotten one in quite awhile, yet my taxes go up, my gas goes up, groceries, wine, etc. Somebody must be getting a raise to cause the increase in prices. Is this too simple?

Since we bought our house in 1996, our taxes have more than doubled. Gasoline has almost tripled. Let's not forget utilities!

I recently landed a job with the Wells Fargo personal banking and loan under writing team. I was a finance major in college and I'm not particularly worried about my spot in the company, but with this economy you just never know how long you'll stay in the same place...wish me luck.

Good luck to you Ice. I don't bank at WF but both my mortgage and I have a car thru WF. No complaints thus far.


TIS

It is really rough out there for many people.

Frustration and Despair as Job Search Drags On
By MICHAEL LUO
CARLISLE, Ky. — In her well-thumbed, leather-bound Bible, Terri Sadler recently highlighted in bright pink a passage in the Gospel of Matthew. In it, Jesus urges his followers not to “worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

But Ms. Sadler’s tightening throat and halting breath when she tries to read the words aloud make it clear that she is having trouble mustering enough faith to follow them.

Ms. Sadler, who lost her job at an automotive parts plant in October 2008, learned last month that her unemployment insurance had been cut off. She is one of an estimated 2.1 million Americans whose benefits have expired and who are waiting for an end to an impasse that has lasted months in the Senate over extending the payments once more to the long-term unemployed.

Times have changed politically, however, and opposition is growing in Washington and abroad to deficit-bloating government spending, even for those who are hurting.

For Ms. Sadler, and many like her, each passing day has become an excruciating countdown of debts and deadlines.

“I’m basically applying for everything, trying to get something,” said Ms. Sadler, 52, who since early June has not received an unemployment check, which used to be about $388 a week before taxes. “If I don’t, I’m going to lose everything. I’m not going to have a roof over my head. I’m just going to have to walk away with what I have on my back, and my dog.”

She is down to $44 in her purse and a quarter-tank of gas. She says she has exhausted the help of family and friends.

Members of her tiny Baptist church just up the road from her cramped mobile home pooled their money on Sunday to come up with her car payment and insurance. A county ministerial association paid her water bill. A nonprofit organization covered her last two electric bills.

A notepad on her refrigerator lists the other outstanding bills: $102 cellphone, $79 cable and Internet, which she relies on for job-hunting; $15 for her credit card; and $30 for an end table she had bought on layaway. Not listed was $275 for her rent this month, which she still owes.

Every morning, after Ms. Sadler takes her dog out and turns on the coffee maker, she switches on the television to C-Span. Then she cracks open her laptop to resume a job hunt that has become frantic.

But as she has run low on money, her search has also become increasingly circumscribed. She used to drive to drop off résumés with businesses; now she is mostly limited to scanning online listings.
.....
more at
Frustration as Job Search Drags On

Ben Stein says you're a loser if you can't find a job. And he also seems to thinks that people in the Midwest should be used to recessions. Maybe because we're losers....




For one, it has hit the people closest to me the hardest. Until now, I never had a friend who was truly in financial extremis from a recession. When recessions happened, they happened to people in Ohio or Illinois or Michigan.

(snip)

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job. Again, there are powerful exceptions and I know some, but when employers are looking to lay off, they lay off the least productive or the most negative. To assure that a worker is not one of them, he should learn how to work and how to get along — not always easy.

Stein's Column

Reaction to Stein

My Son and Daughter live in VA a couple weeks ago they both got a raise. He got 2 bucks and she got 1 buck. Also he got a 1300.00 bonus and she got a 1500.00.

Ben Stein is a pretentious, overeducated ass. No wonder Ferris Bueller cut his class .

Thanks Mig, now I know who's to blame!

How stupid! What kind of "survey" could he have possibly conducted?

He pulled a survey out of his behind...
I know a few people who don't have jobs that aren't possibly doing all that I think they could be doing. But I know many more that are busting their *** every day to try to find work. There's no way I could make broad negative generalizations about the unemployed. I think people do that just to protect their ego and say it couldn't happen to me or anyone truly deserving.

Many company's have trimmed the fat out of their work force.
Got rid of the extra people, cut out the dead wood workers and forced those left to work harder and smarter to keep their jobs. Yes, if you fear for your job then you either do better or out you go. No whip needed. Fear is the new whip.
The excuse was things are so bad...we have to cut back.

BUT ( there is always a but)

Company profits are up and in some cases soaring...the same ones that have cut those jobs. They will not replace those people, the jobs are gone swallowed up by corporate greed.

so of course things aren't turning around as fast as the Government would like. The faster it does the better they look and peoples fear wills go away.


And lets talk about those jobs that have come out. Most are being offered at less pay then they were paying before, and often without the same benefits that were packaged before.

and just look at those other jobs out there that just pay a little bit more then min. wage...why work at all people say.



Pop said that in the coffee shop this morning he over heard two middle aged guys wearing shorts and tea shirts with saddles ...toasting each other...They signed the bill...we are good for another 99 weeks- hahaha

I think the extension is only good to November.

From The Business Insider

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

Middle Class Being Wiped Out

I do not ever foresee myself being unable to find work for 99 weeks. But of course I'm sure that most of the people in that situation would have said the same thing. It does make a person a bit humble. It also makes a person save more money and check his own emergency funds/plan. The US is not supposed to work this way.



BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — Facing eviction from her Tennessee apartment after several months of unpaid rent, Alexandra Jarrin packed up whatever she could fit into her two-door coupe recently and drove out of town.

Ms. Jarrin, 49, wound up at a motel here, putting down $260 she had managed to scrape together from friends and from selling her living room set, enough for a weeklong stay. It was essentially all the money she had left after her unemployment benefits expired in March. Now she is facing a previously unimaginable situation for a woman who, not that long ago, had a corporate job near New York City and was enrolled in a graduate business school, whose sticker is still emblazoned on her back windshield.

“Barring a miracle, I’m going to be in my car,” she said.
Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim.

For them, the resolution recently of the lengthy Senate impasse over extending jobless benefits was no balm. The measure renewed two federal programs that extended jobless benefits in this recession beyond the traditional 26 weeks to anywhere from 60 to 99 weeks, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. But many jobless have now exceeded those limits. They are adjusting to a new, harsh reality with no income.

In June, with long-term unemployment at record levels, about 1.4 million people were out of work for 99 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not all of them received unemployment benefits, but for many of those who did, the modest payments were a lifeline that enabled them to maintain at least a veneer of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting gas in their cars, paying electric and phone bills.

Without the checks, many like Ms. Jarrin, who lost her job as director of client services at a small technology company in March 2008, are beginning to tumble over the economic cliff. The last vestiges of their former working-class or middle-class lives are gone; it is inescapable now that they are indigent.

Ms. Jarrin said she wept as she drove away from her old life last month, wondering if she would ever be able to reclaim it.
“At one point, I thought, you know, what if I turned the wheel in my car and wrecked my car?” she said.

Nevertheless, the political appetite to help people like Ms. Jarrin appears limited. Over the last few months, 99ers have tried to organize to press Congress to provide an additional tier of unemployment insurance. But the political potency of fears about the skyrocketing deficit has drowned them out. The notion that unemployment benefits discourage recipients from finding work has also crept into Republican arguments against extensions. As a result, the plight of 99ers was notably absent from the recent debate in the Senate.

Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, is now working on a bill to help those in the group, a spokesman, Miguel Ayala, said, but the chances of providing them with additional weeks of benefits seem dim.

“It’s going to be extremely hard to pass,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project. “We barely got 60 votes to keep 99 weeks, so it’s even harder to get more.”

Other ways of helping the long-term jobless might have a better shot of succeeding, Mr. Stettner said, like a temporary jobs program or assistance for emergency needs.

Ms. Jarrin ping-pongs between resolve and despair. She received her last unemployment check in the third week of March, putting her among the first wave of 99ers. Her two checking accounts now show negative balances (she has overdrafts on both). Her cellphone has been ringing incessantly with calls from the financing company for her car loan. Her vehicle is on the verge of being repossessed.

It is a sickening plummet, considering that she was earning $56,000 a year in her old job, enjoyed vacationing in places like Mexico and the Caribbean, and had started business school in 2008 at Iona College.

Ms. Jarrin had scrabbled for her foothold in the middle class. She graduated from college late in life, in 2003, attending classes while working full time. She used to believe that education would be her ticket to prosperity, but is now bitter about what it has gotten her.

“I owe $92,000 for an education which is basically worthless,” she said.

Last year she moved to Brentwood, Tenn., south of Nashville, in search of work. After initially trying to finish her M.B.A. program remotely, she dropped out because of the stress from her sinking finances. She has applied for everything from minimum-wage jobs to director positions.

She should have been evicted from her two-bedroom apartment several months ago, but the process was delayed when flooding gripped middle Tennessee in May. In mid-July, a judge finally gave her 10 days to vacate.

Helped by some gas cards donated by a church, she decided to return to this quiet New England town, where she had spent most of her adult life. She figured the health care safety net was better, as well as the job market.

She contacted a local shelter but learned there was a waiting list. Welfare is not an option, because she does not have young children. She says none of her three adult sons are in a position to help her.

A friend wired her $200 while she was driving from Tennessee, enabling her to check into a motel along the way and helping to pay for her stay here. But Ms. Jarrin doubts that much more charity is coming.

“The only help I’m going to get is from myself,” she said. “I’m going to have to take care of me. That has to be through a job.”

So, in her drab motel room, Ms. Jarrin has been spending her days surfing the Internet, applying for jobs.

Lining the shelves underneath the television are her food supplies: rice and noodles that Ms. Jarrin mixes with water in the motel’s ice bucket and heats up in a microwave; peanut butter and jelly; a loaf of white bread.

Ms. Jarrin still has food stamps, which she qualified for in Tennessee. But she is required to report her move, which will cut them off, so she will have to reapply in Vermont.

She has been struggling with new obstacles, like what to do when an address is required in online applications. She is worried about what will happen when her cellphone is finally cut off, because then any calls to the number she sent out with her résumés will disappear into a netherworld.

The news, however, has not been all bad. She had her first face-to-face interview in more than a year, for a coordinator position at a nonprofit drop-in center, on Monday.

And last Thursday, she got her first miracle, when an old friend from New York sent by overnight mail $300 in cash, enough for another week in purgatory.

99 Weeks Later Article

I understand that the workers who are out of work for a long amounts of time are consider dead workers. No one wants to hire people who have not worked in two years. So if they sit and take all their "99 weeks" then they are less likely to be hired by a company.

Add that second set of "99 weeks" and you are dead to most companies. No on wants a worker who hasn't worked in almost FOUR YEARS! Not for any real important placement anyway.

There are to many "fresh" people to pick from as they say. Things move so quickly now that if you stay out of the workforce for that long a time you are not current,

Reminds you of women who want to re-enter the market after raising their families, only to be shuffled back to low end jobs. Things change so fast that you have to stay current!

It's a sense of hopelessness and helplessness that I can't imagine. Even in the early 1990s, when the last recession hit us, you were still able to patch together a living, even if it meant working two or three part-time jobs. Now, you can't even find those. I've never seen anything like this. And with the huge percentage of income that people need to dedicate to housing, too many are only a paycheck or two away from being homeless. No wonder the recovery has stalled. Everyone's scared to death.

Like one man said.

The passing of this next "99 weeks" deal is nothing but a payoff to keep the masses from rising up and revolting!

In another life when I was a financial advisor we used to tell people to get at least 6 months of expenses saved before they even thought about doing anything else investment wise.

Now I think I'd tell folks to have at least 18mths to two years of expenses socked away in low risk readily accessible accounts.

That story sort of hit home for me because I have an older relative that's going through a similar situation. It's a thin line between trying to help out financially and so on and between getting frustrated and telling them to find a **** job. But there just aren't a lot of jobs out there. It's a paradox. Ultimately everyone has to make their own way in the world yet at the same time to an extent we are our brother's or sister's keeper.

From day one of my professional career, I saved and invested money. At the time my wife and I were supporting my daughter and 5 stepkids. My wife was working at a mental health facility. We drove a 64 Chevy decorated with rust stains and had to have the engine replaced at one time and at another point couldn't afford to replace the thermostat so we had no heat in the car for at least one winter. Everybody has their own story of woe, but sometimes there are circumstances that result from bad decisions, lack of presence of mind, failure to anticipate variables, or just the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We provide our fellow Americans with a good deal of help; beyond that I don't know what we can do or should do.