In this episode, we’re going to put the poets out front to report the economic news. Lu Olkowski’s  “In Verse” – is a multimedia reporting project combining poetry, interviews, and photography. This installment takes us to Troy, New York. Long, long ago Troy was a thriving manufacturing town. These days, as you will find out, [...]

“This story should be a screaming headline on the front page – not buried on page 9999 in blogland. What is the US coming to?” Just one of the comments left on the New York Times site in reponse to an article about the end of COBRA subsidies yesterday. The subsidies, part of the stimulus [...]

Yesterday marked the expiration of the first wave of subsidies distributed to unemployed workers for their COBRA health insurance. The subsidies, part of the stimulus package passed in February, cover 65% of COBRA premiums for nine months for those laid off from September 2008 to December 2009. So unless congress acts, the cost of health [...]

Speaking of crime and the recession, we found this press release issued last year by the National Retail Federation. It deals with store return policies and “return fraud.”

Though retailers seem to be confronting return fraud, incidents continue to permeate most retail stores. According to the survey, most retailers (88.9%) have had stolen merchandise returned to stores within the past year. Retailers also report being victimized by returns of merchandise originally purchased with fraudulent or stolen tender (74.1%) and returns using counterfeit receipts (45.7%).

The release goes on to address something called “wardrobing.”

The New York Times reported the other day that even in this brutal economy, crime is actually down in New York City.
“The idea that everyone has ingrained into them — that as the economy goes south, crime has to get worse — is wrong,” said David M. Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It was never right to begin with.”

…While there is generally thought to be a lag between changing economic conditions and new crime patterns, he said, it is curious that there has been no pronounced jump in street crimes associated with the most recent recession, which took root last year.

A series of posts from the political science blog Monkey Cage addresses this counterintuitive lack of correlation between crime and the economy, in relation to people’s perceptions.

Michael Silverstein is a financial writer and former senior editor for Bloomberg. But more recently, he’s known as The Wall Street Poet, writing market commentary in the form of satiricial verse. A regular contributor to Minnesota Public Radio, he also has his own web site, WallStreetPoet.com, featuring a substantial archive. Those in the know about [...]