VICTORVILLE, CA—Following the general trend seen all over the country, there’s been a push around these parts to convince people that the recession will soon be a thing of the past. Local papers have been publishing articles with laughable headlines like “SoCal housing market may be stabilizing” or “Local economy back in growth mode.” Meanwhile, the city of Victorville has been abandoning non-mission-critical development projects, raising utility fees and borrowing from itself like mad to keep a few core development projects afloat to, you know, keep up appearances. Last week, community elders pulled together a who’s who of obscure shills for the 10th Annual High Desert Economic summit, hoping that a pep talk and some community time will help shake out the recession blues. (more…)
It’s 5 AM in Victorville, California, and I haven’t slept in 48 hours. Outside my second-story window, the sun is rising up over the jagged mountains across the desert. In the three months I’ve lived here, I’ve seen more sunrises than I have in my 28 years. There is something about living in a barren house in a half-empty suburb out in the middle of a sun-baked nowhere that brings out the tweaker in me—and judging by daily news reports, most of my neighbors, too.
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Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is in China today, doing whatever it takes–no matter how shameless and sordid– to make sure that the Chinese don’t pull out of American bonds, which are tanking in value thanks to Geithner’s multi-trillion-dollar gift to Wall Street. The Chinese are not happy, and since the Chinese loaned America all the money it’s now blowing, they call the shots.
The Tim Geithner lifting ass today in China sounds a lot different from the Tim Geithner who recently played the role of alpha Chinaman Dominator when he was trying to impress the wannabe macho men in Congress. The Treasury Secretary’s old self was captured perfectly in a NY Times article headlined “Geithner Hints At Harder Line on China Trade.” (more…)
One of the things Wall Street does best is confuse people. They are brilliant at it, making simple things seem complex. So today we’re going to go over one of the things they’re trying to make obscure and make them simple—‘credit default swaps.’ A credit default swap is nothing more complex than insurance. I pay an insurance company roughly $600 every six months and if I crash my car they have to pay for it. I’m paying them a certain premium to assume the risk of me crashing my car. CDS is the same thing, but for bonds. I’m paying someone to assume the risk of my bonds not being paid off. I strike a deal with Party X and they agree that if Company Y goes busto and defaults on their debt Party X will pay me the face value of the bonds that Company Y issued. Simplest fucking thing in the world, it’s bond insurance. Why does Wall Street bother to make up a weird name? (more…)
Joe the Copywriter (whose identity we’re not revealing yet) was fired less than 24 hours after we posted an article with him railing on his incompetent bosses at the Yellow Pages company. He gloated that these Just-For-Men-highlight-wearing-morons were too clueless to fire him. But he spoke too soon. It seems there is something those execs are very good at: running a Gestapo-style espionage operation against their employees. (more…)
The past few weeks, national headlines swirled with distressing news for an American workforce already cowering in fear. As the world suffers the worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression, two-thirds of American CEOs plan to fire employees in the next year, Obama stimulus or no. Something like 70,000 people lost their jobs on a single Monday two weeks ago. I thought I was going to be one of them. I should have been one of them. (more…)
Little did I know that when I lost everything last year, I was doing research. At the time I thought it was just stupidity or bad luck or both. But now that the economy’s crashing, it turns out I’ve been out there gathering valuable tips for millions of new paupers.
And let me clarify, I’m talking real poverty.
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