Here are NewWork News stories from previous month

Need a huge mortgage? Well, you may be in luck, again (Sunday 4/5/09)
"Jumbo mortgages" are coming back, according to this Wall Street Journal report from Amy Hoak.

Who gets to replenish all those public pension funds? (Sunday 4/5/09)
Guess who is being asked? Investment losses have greatly depleted those funds. Here are some of the findings from research conducted by Boston College's Center for Retirement Research.

When more than a year of jobless benefits may not be enough (Sunday 4/5/09)
Many Americans have been looking unsuccessfully for jobs since before this time last year, and their jobless benefits are about to expire.

What? What business do lenders think they're in? (Sunday 4/5/09)
Kathy Chu reports that many credit card companies are reducing credit to the very customers who are most likely to pay it back. Here's why.

Convenience recedes with the rest of the economy (Sunday 4/5/09)
There seems to be little doubt that a much different economy will emerge from the Great Recession than the one America had going in. However, it's already started. Consumer convenience already has taken a hit, it seems.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Archives of Irish America (Sunday 4/5/09)
The United States is a nation of immigrants, although some first arrived here as long ago as twenty-thousand years. Most, though, came to what is now the United States far more recently--some because they were fleeing religious or economic circumstances, some because they were kidnapped and brought here involuntarily.

The Irish came to America when economic conditions became intolerable in their nation of origin. Many settled in places like Boston or St. Paul, and many of their descendants still identify with their Irish ancestors.

Many of the Irish arrived in America during the 19th century, but some came during the previous century, and weren't really Irish at all. Many persons in Appalachia have ancestors who really were Scottish, but came here via Ireland.

Here are New York University's Archives of Irish America.

Why former mortgage holders are renting in the "exhurbs" now (Saturday 4/4/09)
The reasons for moving to the fringes of the suburbs in the first place have largely disappeared, and, for many, home ownership is gone, but the long commute remains. Here's more from Conor Dougherty.

Speaking of mortgages, Scott Reckard in the Los Angeles Times writes about a new report from federal regulators that shows the extent to which lenders often provided mortgage assistance that didn't work to minimize defaults.

Is Mickey's job in jeopardy? (Saturday 4/4/09)
The famed Walt Disney theme parks in the United States expect to cut approximately 1,900 jobs, most of them in Florida.

In addition, a Massachusetts-based instruments maker has announced that it intends to eliminate another 370 workers from its payroll.

Will the Globe survive? (Saturday 4/4/09)
Unions at the Boston Globe are saying that the paper's owner is telling them that they must agree to $20 million in concessions or the paper will cease to exist. And, oh yes, the Globe's is the New York Times organization.

Newspapers in the United States, as we have known them for so long, may be dying. Even so-called "national" papers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post have been making cuts and may be endangered.

What would we do without newspapers? Small town papers rely heavily for their national and international stories on various wire services, which, in turn, depend on the organizations that surbscribe to their services, as well papers like the Times and Post, of course.

In addition, thousands of smaller papers have been covering local events as no other have been able to do, including the traditional broadcast media, which have been suffering from declining advertising revenue as much as the newspapers, and have been laying off people in large numbers.

We fully recognize that NewWork News is largely parasitic. Among other things, we are a highly specialized "aggregator." We "point to" stories already on the Internet. In fact, major organizations such as the Conference Board regularly send us press releases, but we don't use the information contained in them until somebody else has published it on the Web. We wait for something we can point to.

Of course, "pointing" is not all we do. Regular readers know that nearly two dozen people have written for us over the years, including our four regular columnists, as well as the frequent "analysis" written by Gary Johnson.

Still, SOMEBODY has to do the legwork, and we fear the day when there may no longer be newspapers. The Internet clearly offers distribution advantages, but no one has worked out a suitable business model yet that will cover the costs of doing what all of us need to have done.

On the future of taxation in the United States (Saturday 4/4/09)
Here are some thoughts about some of the tax policy changes that are in the works.

Guess what, Mr. Jefferson--there will be a "Northwest Passage" after all (Saturday 4/4/09)
Climate change seems likely to make the "Northwest Passage" navigable on a consistent basis, but that's only the good news about climate change. In fact, as Randolph Schmid reports, experts are estimating that ice in the Arctic Sea is melting so fast that it could be gone entirely in 30 years, and this could help make the rest of the planet very hard to live on.

Incidentally, many of the changes that strike fear into the hearts of people who understand these things best are occurring more rapidly than originally thought, and that wouldn't surprise visionary inventor and scholar, Ray Kurzweil.

Among the many things contained in his often ignored book, The Singularity is Near, are a lot of data showing how change typically has occurred in the past. On a graph, it's "ogival," meaning that change occurs so slowly for a long time, that few people notice. In fact, if you look at only part of the graph, change appears linear--but wait. Eventually, changes occur very rapidly.

For instance, it book from the beginning of modern humans until approximately 1840 before there were a billion persons on Earth. Now, only about 170 years later, there are nearly 7 billion.

Job search has been moving to TV (Saturday 4/4/09)
Among the people who are desperately searching for jobs are some who are trying to sell their services on television.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Resources on the U.S. Presidents (Saturday 4/4/09)
At first, you might assume that this site comes from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., but, instead, Resources on the U.S. Presidents comes from the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

We have a new President now, so this might be a particularly good time to think about the forty-two other men who have held the office. While the Bush Presidents often referred to themselves as numbers 41 and 43, only forty-two men have preceded President Obama in the presidency. That's because Grover Cleveland, even though he was President for eight years, had two nonconsecutive four-year terms. Grover Cleveland was President, then Benjamin Harrison was President, then Grover Cleveland was President again.

Incidentally, an earlier president was responsible for designing and establishing the University of Virginia at Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson.

Are you feeling as though it's 1983 today? (Friday 4/3/09)
New data from the Labor Department shows that the unemployment rate has reached 8.5 percent, its highest level in twenty-six years. At least, the OFFICIAL unemployment rate is 8.5 percent, but, according to Catherine Holahan, the "real" unemployment rate is far higher.

Mortgage rates fall again (Friday 4/3/09)
New reports released yesterday find that mortgage rates in the United States got even lower last week.

More service sector shrinkage (Friday 4/3/09)
March was a rough month for services in the United States. In fact, it was the sixth consecutive month that the sector got smaller. That's particularly important, because the service sector is the largest in the American economy.

A G-20 postmortem (Friday 4/3/09)
Mick Weinstein offers his interpretation of what happened in the big meeting yesterday in London.

If you've been waiting for a cost-of-living increase in your Social Security check, you'll probably have a wait a few years more (Friday 4/3/09)
Stephen Ohlemacher explains why it may be three years before there has to be an effort by the Social Security Administration to try to compensate for inflation.

If you're feeling guilty about twittering on company time, there may now be reason to relax (Friday 4/3/09)
Of course, you will need for your boss to know about these latest findings and take them seriously. A new study from the University of Melbourne says that spending time on the Internet at work may make you of greater value to your employer.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Periodic Table of Videos (Friday 4/3/09)
If you're from the "video generation" and would like to know more about the elements, the Periodic Table of Videos will be just the thing for you. It comes from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

The G-20 agree on big loans (Thursday 4/2/09)
Tom Raum reports from London on a $1.1 trillion agreement among the world's leading economies. Tom Bemis said that G-20 participants each had 11 minutes to save capitalism.

Remember back in the dim distant past--about a week ago Thursday--when a billion dollars was a lot of money?

American consumers became only slightly more confident last month (Thursday 4/2/09)
According to the Conference Board, consumer confidence in the United States rose only slightly in March. It's still very near its record low.

More evidence of China's global ambitions (Thursday 4/2/09)
Joe McDonald is in Beijing where he writes about China's effort to reduce international reliance on the U. S. dollar and extend the influence of its yuan.

AmeriCorps expands (Thursday 4/2/09)
Ann Sanner writes from Washington that the House has overwhelmingly passed a bill that expands the AmeriCorps program the most since its establishment during the Clinton administration in 1993.

Get ready for a larger paycheck (Thursday 4/2/09)
Actually, it won't be enough larger to disrupt your life. Nonetheless, Jeanne Sahadi reports that a stimulus bonus is about to be added to the paychecks of eligible workers. Who's eligible? Read the article we're pointing to and you'll probably be able to tell if you can expect a raise from Uncle Sam.

Is the recession finally "bottoming out?" (Thursday 4/2/09)
We can only hope, given the pain throughout much of the world that the Great Recession has caused so far. Christopher Rugaber writes about the signs. But, what about the possibility of a "double-dip?"

However, first-time unemployment assistance applications have hit their highest level in a quarter century. Still, there are the encouraging signs, and many economists believe that employment is a "trailing indicator." That is, job creation can be expected to pick up after the rest of the economy has been "cooking" for a while.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: New Europe (Thursday 4/2/09)
New Europe is a journal, but this couldn't be a much better time to point it out. It's been publishing for 16 years and covers developments in nearly 50 countries.

However, it focuses much of its attention on the European Union, which is one major institutional attempt to integrate countries that arose out of much earlier historical conditions and which have fought among themselves for centuries.

With huge centralized countries such as the United States to compete with in the new global economy, as well as emerging countries such as China and Brazil, many Europeans feel a need to speak with a single voice.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that the nearly 50 countries covered by this journal are essentially like the 50 American states, as Germany and France's attitudes during the G-20 summit in London have demonstrated.

Violence in advance of G-20 meeting in London (Wednesday 4/1/09)
The conference itself doesn't get underway until tomorrow, but protesters already have clashed with police and have broken into the Royal Bank of Scotland.

What if you buy a new car, then lose your job? (Wednesday 4/1/09)
All efforts to rescue the American automotive industry will fail if consumers don't buy cars. As a consequence, both the industry and government are trying to help Americans do that, even in a rougher-than-expected job market. For one thing, the government is trying to encourage auto sales by making new car sales tax deductible.

The car companies themselves are telling consumers not to worry too much about buying a new car, then losing their jobs. So far, General Motors, and Ford will forgive car payments for the laid off for a few months, and Hyundai will take back a new car purchased by an individual who is laid off later. Toyota and Kia also are offering job loss insurance in Canada.

In the United States, both Chrysler and General Motors are scrambling to avoid bankruptcy, even though, in a global recession, it isn't only North American car companies that are having problems.

More job cuts at 3M (Wednesday 4/1/09)
People throughout the world are losing their jobs. For instance, 3M Corporation will eliminate another 1,200 people from its worldwide payroll, according to WCCO News in Minneapolis, a few miles 3M's global headquarters.

February was a bad month for jobs in all American metropolitan areas (Wednesday 4/1/09)
By current definition, there are 372 metropolitan areas in the United States, and all had increased unemployment during February.

Mixed housing data (Wednesday 4/1/09)
Here are some of the residential real estate numbers: On the one hand, pending home sales in the United States were up 2.1 percent in February compared to a month earlier. On the other hand, construction spending was down during the same month. On the other hand, mortgage rates established new historic lows during a recent week, and while home prices are low, Brett Arends says they haven't hit bottom yet.

Obamanomics vs. Reaganomics (Wednesday 4/1/09)
Former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich writes in the Wall Street Journal on the relative approaches to severe economic downturns taken by two presidents.

Incidentally, even though both Paul Volker and Robert Reich are brilliant, highly credentialled and experienced economists and both are advising President Obama, why are they seldom shown together in the same photographs?

Is it because one is a generation older? Not at all. Is it because one was Secretary of the Treasury, while the other was Chairman of the Federal Reserve? No, no, no.

It's because Paul Volker is nearly seven feet tall, while Robert Reich is less than five feet. However, Dr. Reich is taller than Rahm Emanuel, the 23rd White House Chief of Staff. But, they're infrequently shown in the same photos as well. We don't know why either.

What "we have a hiring freeze" really means (Wednesday 4/1/09)
It doesn't necessarily mean that the company isn't hiring at all, according to Jia Lynn Yang. In fact, you might still be able to land a job.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: A Nursery of Patriotism (Wednesday 4/1/09)
How is the American university institution influenced during wartime? Janis Holder and other University of North Carolina scholars examine this question as it has pertained over a considerable period of U. S. history in A Nursery of Patriotism: The University at War, 1861-1945.

Here are NewWork News stories from previous months