Okay, you’ve either been frantically looking for work or just scraping by, when one day you open your mailbox to find—other than a tax audit—the most consistently unwelcome piece of mail in contemporary society—a jury summons. To that end, the New York Times ran a piece the other day with the headline “Call to Jury [...]

The Economic Policy Institute has posted some charts and analysis comparing the jobs deterioration in this recession and previous downturns. What did they come up with? Hint: It’s not pretty. These two charts are particularly telling: “Employment has decreased much more during this recession—4.8%—than in prior recessions. In particular, during the first nineteen months of [...]

If you happen to be in Cambridge, Massachussetts on October 8th, drop in on a lecture by Marc Hauser, Director of the Cognitive Evolution Lab at Harvard: How Apes and Monkeys May Help Us Understand the Economic Crisis. Hauser will argue that “many of the problems in our own economic decision-making can be traced back millions of years when our primate ancestors were small-brained quadrupeds lacking any concept of money or the stock market.” Hmm. Sounds like some financial advisors we know.

In this first episode of EconomyBeat, KALW’s Zoe Corneli goes on a ride-along with sheriff deputies as they evict people from their homes. In Alameda County in Northern California, foreclosures have increased the number of evictions from about 300 to about 500 each month. The deputies who perform those evictions have a first hand look at some of the real life impacts of a down economy. This piece originally aired on KALW’s nightly news program Crosscurrents.

September is the cruelest month – for the stock market. According to the data, if the leaves have started to fall, so have the major indices. In September, the Dow and S&P 500 have dropped on an average of 22 out of 30 days, the Nasdaq 17 of 30. The bulls having enjoyed a Pamplona-like [...]