Weekend Reading

Stories below I did not have time to get to during the week - peruse at your leisure if any are of interest...

As a special note - if you find an uplifting or positive economic story please email me; I am getting depressed watching this all unfold even if much of it was predicted on these virtual pages.

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First, let's begin with a great cover story in Fortune: The New Jobless. This truly puts a human face to all the numbing numbers. Each one is a relatively quick blurb from a different age group, a different city, a different situation, a different industry.

The numbers are staggering, especially because the tallies are being measured in human beings: Caterpillar (20,000 layoffs), Alcoa (15,000), Boeing (10,000), Pfizer (8,300), and tens of thousands more. The toll of jobs lost in the United States since the recession began is heading toward three million. Unlike previous downturns, this one is not confined to the tech or manufacturing sectors. It is the Equal Opportunity Recession, winding its way into every corner of the economy. To put faces on the numbers, Fortune interviewed dozens of jobless people across the country. They are old and young, rich and poor, from rural Maine and urban California. They are your neighbor or your nephew. Or they are you.

1. Where the People Feel Like Spare Parts
2. A Career Counselor Takes His Own Advice
3. Looking for Life After Lehman Brothers
4. Sleepless Nights After the Mill Winds Down
5. An Odyssey of Downward Mobility
6. Back from War but Fighting for a Job
7. A Pig Farmer's Last Truckload
8. From Yahoo to Layoff in Internet Time
9. An Ivy League Mom with a Dream on Hold
10. The Whole Family Joins the Army
11. The Reverse Brain Drain
12. After an 8 Month Search: You're Hired!

USA Today: 1 in 9 Homes in America Now Empty

A record 1 in 9 U.S. homes are vacant, a glut created by the housing boom and subsequent collapse. The surge in empty houses, condominiums and apartments is creating a wave of problems for communities desperate to shore up property values and tax revenues that pay for services. Vacant homes create upkeep and safety problems that ripple through neighborhoods.

Homes priced at $500,000 or more are just as likely to be empty as homes that cost less than $100,000.

WSJ: Cocoa Prices Create Chocolate Dilemma. No inflation here! Cocoa futures spiking - but I am worried this is going to be part of a larger trend as the malinvestment in foodstuffs due to fertilizer prices, lack of credit, etc leads to spiking food prices.

Soaring cocoa prices are creating a Valentine's Day dilemma for chocolate makers. They don't want to raise retail prices when recession-weary consumers are trying to limit their spending. Confectioners are keeping prices steady for now, hoping for strong sales in the two biggest days of the year for chocolate purchases, Feb. 13 and 14. That could change, however, once the holiday is over. Raw materials account for about half of chocolate makers' total costs.

...supply shortage caused in part by crop diseases in Ivory Coast and Ghana sent cocoa up 38% from its lows in November, to $2,644 a metric ton on Thursday. The price of sugar, another raw material, is up 23% since October to 13.13 cents a pound, the result of a smaller-than expected crop in India, the No. 2 producer after Brazil.

NYT: Michael More is Targeting Wall Street for His Next Project and Needs Your Help. Should be an entertaining flick especially for those who have been living and breathing this for the past half decade but it would of been more helpful if it came out 2-3 years ago and warned of the coming doom.

Workers of Wall Street: You may feel unappreciated, or even reviled, these days, but take heart — there’s a big-name movie director who wants to talk to you.

Michael Moore, the man behind “Bowling for Columbine,” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” has put out the call for people in the banking, brokerage and insurance industries to tell him the inside story about the recent financial meltdown and what he refers to as “the biggest swindle in American history.”

Bloomberg: Volcker Clashes with Summers. In a story that should chill everyone - Paul Volcker is getting "frozen out" by Larry Summers

Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said.

Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said.

USA Today: Condom Use is Surging. Well, when you can't afford anything else.... just love the comment from the marketing guy from Trojan ;)

With a crippled economy forcing millions of cash-strapped Americans to entertain themselves at home, it's not surprising that one particular product is seeing a sales increase — condoms. While car purchases plummeted and designer clothes mostly stayed on the racks, sales of condoms in the U.S. rose 5% in the fourth quarter of 2008, and 6% in January vs. the same time periods the previous year.

"If people don't have the money to go out to a fancy dinner or are looking to cut back, Trojan gives them some real affordable ways to stay in and make some great memories together," says Jim Daniels, vice president of marketing for Trojan, the nation's No. 1 condom maker.

WSJ: Microsoft to Open Stores to Compete With Apple. I almost fell off my chair reading that one - mommy! mommy! Take me to the store so I can get a Zune!

Microsoft Corp. said it hired a former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive to help the company open its own retail stores, a strategy shift that borrows from the playbook of rival Apple Inc. It remains to be seen whether the effort can add some pizzazz to Microsoft's unfashionable image, which Apple has sought to reinforce with ads that mock its competitor.

Remember that Boondoggle called Ethanol?? We do! [Apr 28, 2008: States, CEOs Beginning to Snap Back at Ethanol - the "Administration" Holds Firm] They have one powerful lobby but eventually the laws of economics win (do you hear that government?) NYT: Just Recently a Savior, is Struggling

Barely a year after Congress enacted an energy law meant to foster a huge national enterprise capable of converting plants and agricultural wastes into automotive fuel, the goals lawmakers set for the ethanol industry are in serious jeopardy.

As recently as last summer, plants that make ethanol from corn were sprouting across the Midwest. But now, with motorists driving less in the economic downturn, the industry is burdened with excess capacity, and plants are shutting down virtually every week.

USA Today: Consumers Lose Access to their Experian Credit Scores. Ridiculous.

At a time when it's more important than ever for consumers to monitor their credit scores, they're losing one option of doing so. Starting Saturday, FICO credit scores based on data from Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, will not be available to consumers. Steven Wagner, president of consumer information services at Experian, says the firm nixed its partnership with Fair Isaac to sell the scores to consumers because Fair Isaac was "simply unreasonable" in negotiating a separate contract.