Econopocalypse Goes From Bad to Worse

Posted by Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake at 7:37 AM on January 30, 2009.

Anyone else getting that "bottom's gonna fall out of the tilt-a-whirl" feeling about the economy, too? It's an ugly day of news on the economic front:

-- Calculated Risk says consensus predictions are a 5.4% drop in GDP for the last quarter. Numbers are due today. There's a lot of money in short-selling in this market, so I'm always suspicious of analyst motive: how can you tell self-interest driven analysis from honesty? But it still looks bleak. Bloomberg says economy tanked faster than any time since 1982. Ouch.

-- The spot of good news? The Senate passed SCHIP last night. Boo yah!

-- Via LATimes:

On Thursday, three milestones showing the depths of the downturn were reached: The number of workers filing unemployment claims hit an all-time high, sales of new homes fell to an all-time low, and production of durable goods dropped for the fifth straight month, boosting inventories to their highest level since at least 1992....

Calculated Risk has a series of indicator charts on the credit crisis that are equally grim.

-- WSJ reports that adjustable rate ARM defaults, many of which are the so-called "jumbo ARMs," are rising. The next wave of the shitpile crashes.

-- Fewer orders means more layoffs.

-- You know it's bad when big law firms are pinching back the billable hour.

-- All is not grim: Exxon had record profits. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

-- President Obama plans to roll back some anti-labor Bush orders this morning, and will then meet with his newly created Middle Class Task Force, after smacking back at Wall Street excesses yesterday. Veep Biden has an op-ed on the middle class in today's USAToday:

America's middle class is hurting. Trillions of dollars in home equity, retirement savings and college savings are gone. And every day, more and more Americans are losing their jobs.

For the backbone of the USA, it's insult on top of injury. Over the course of America's last economic expansion, the middle class participated in very few of the benefits. But now in the midst of this historic economic downturn, the middle class sure is participating in all of the pain. Something is seriously wrong when the economic engine of this nation — the great middle class — is treated this way.

Cue the socialism howling from the GOP in 5...4...3... Never mind that a deliberate income shift to the top few for producing little of value or running companies into the ground is always awesome!!!

-- A national effort to get a handle on the number of homeless is underway. With a record number of unemployment claims, and increasing numbers of articles about "talking to your kids about the family budget crunch" and "stretching your grocery dollar" a lot of folks are asking when the stimulus will ever trickle on to them. "Cutting back" is the new new, which just feeds the bad GDP numbers and makes it tough on farmers.

-- The upside to spending less? Less trash in landfills.

Real people, real families are caught in this whirlwind. We'd do well to remember that. How are things with you? Weathering this winter storm?

Tagged as: exxon, economic crisis, economic meltdown, dow, econopocalypse

Christy Hardin Smith is a former attorney, who earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College, in American Studies and Government, concentrating in American Foreign Policy. She then went on to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of political science and international relations/security studies, before attending law school at the College of Law at West Virginia University, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review.