‘Great Recession’ over, research group says

The “Great Recession�? has ended, officially.

At least, that’s the word from the private research organization that calls the beginnings and endings of recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The NBER said Monday that the recession which began in December 2007 ended in June 2009, which marked the beginning of an expansion. The announcement rules out the possibility of a so-called “double-dip�? recession, because any new downturn would be seen as a brand new recession.

President Barack Obama said that even though the NBER officially named an end to the recession, the economy has a long way to go and much work to be done to become healthy again. “Something that took ten years to create is going to take a little more time to solve,” Obama said at a town-hall-style meeting shown live on CNBC.

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‘Great Recession’ over, research group says

That’s marvelous news. Simply marvelous.

The stocks are UP, the Dow Jones is at 105.31 as of 12:30PM today. Standards and Poors and NASDAQ are up appreciably as well. For once I can almost agree with Barack Hussein Obama’s statement, “Something that took ten years to create is going to take a little more time to solve,”

What he meant was, ‘It’s Bush’s fault’, he just didn’t come out and say it.

Obama is partially correct though, it is going to take some time to resolve this mess, I’d say sometime in January of 2013 would be a good target date, that being the time that hopefully we have a CONSERVATIVE Congress, Senate and White House!

So, as we read the We can ALL feel good the recession is over report, we get this:

‘The new unemployables’: Workers over 50

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

A growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force forever.

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‘The new unemployables’: Workers over 50

There’s not supposed to be ANY discrimination regarding American workers and their right to employment, regardless of age, race, color, religion, sex, disability or national origin. We have LAWS to that affect. SOURCE

Sounds real good on paper, too bad it’s not a reality.

There is a ‘gray ceiling‘ regarding the hiring of older Americans.

I personally know a lady that is incredibly well qualified. She has a college education, she is highly experienced as a load planner, dispatcher, office manager, safety manager and in every other aspect of the trucking and transportation industry.

She even holds a valid Class *A* Commercial Drivers License.

She has been employed in the trucking industry for 39 years and is very well qualified.

Now, here’s the truth about age discrimination. She’s about to turn 60. She gets called in for an interview(s) and they see this gray haired woman and that’s about as far as it gets.

Qualifications and experience go right out the window once you pass the age of 60. As you approach 60, it’s nearly impossible to compete with the younger, and in most cases, far less experienced individuals in the job market.

The interviewer won’t say, ‘Well, were looking for someone a little younger‘, they can’t DO that, it is against the law. What they can say is, ‘Thank you, we’ll get back to you‘. Yeah, right…

Age discrimination, and many other forms of discrimination (silent discrimination) aren’t supposed to exist in this new and modern world, but they do.

Fed ready to slash rates amid deepening recession

WASHINGTON (AP) - With the recession dragging down consumer prices and home construction, the Federal Reserve is prepared to slash a key interest rate - perhaps to an all-time low - in a desperate bid to stem the country’s economic slide.

Consumer prices fell by a record amount in November, while home building plunged by the most in a quarter-century, according to government reports released Tuesday that underscored the economy’s weakening state.

Falling prices for goods and services at first blush might sound like a good thing. But if prices keep spiraling downward, they can wreak economic havoc. That gives the Fed another reason to lower rates, which would protect against this risk.

With the Fed’s key rate dropping ever closer to zero, the central bank is moving into uncharted territory.

Nonetheless, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has made it clear the Fed isn’t running out of ammunition to fight the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. It is exploring using tools - other than rate cuts - to revive the economy. New insights on that front could be revealed when Bernanke and his colleagues wrap up a two-day meeting Tuesday.

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Fed ready to slash rates amid deepening recession

I have said many times, I am NOT a finance guy, I have a finance guy that takes care of our business for us, so, take this as an opinion piece only.

The FED is cutting rates again, and saying it’s going to help *jump start* the economy. Well, maybe so, but it hasn’t done it so far. The *stimulus* checks were supposed to *jump start* the economy. Nope, didn’t happen, in fact, it got worse.

The stock market is shaky at best, up one day and down the next. Wall Street has lost well over 5K points in recent days. I felt that the stock market was seriously over inflated anyway, I have felt that there had to be a correction in market levels. And there was.

This morning the markets opened UP, as I am writing this they are floating in the + 80/90 range, but if recent actions are any indication, the market could close up by a few hundred or down by just as much. Any hiccup in the market can drive it crazy, one way or the other.

Once upon a time there were many people heavily invested in CDs, certificates of deposit for you younger folks that may not know what an original CD was. Today, as of right now, the return on CDs is ridiculous. A 6 month CD is coming in at 2.75%, a 1 year CD at 3.20%, a 5 year CD is bringing in 3.62%, a bit better yes, but your money is tied up for 5 years. IRA CDs aren’t any better, a 1 year is at 2.89% and a 5 year is at 3.26%. All of those figures are current as of today and are down from last week. Figures were taken from Bankrate.com

I have no idea what to do. I am not alone either. Many of us, hell, ALL of us are in a quandary, especially retirees. We are on fixed incomes and rely on investments to take up the slack in our incomes. That money is just not there now. I am seriously concerned, I am wondering if Paulson and Bernanke are not more the cause of the problem than they are the solution. Between the crooks on Wall Street, and the other crooks in corporate headquarters stealing this nation blind, what in the hell is the average guy supposed to do?

Any thoughts or ideas on your situation?

EDIT TO ADD: Stocks surge after Fed cuts rates to record low

The Dow Jones industrials are up 360, or 4.2 percent, at the 8,924 level Tuesday. Broader indexes have surged more than 5 percent.

Bush uses final 50 days in office to tout legacy

WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush says history will judge him, but he is getting his own crack first. Bush is using his final 50 days in office to tout his legacy, hoping to leave a lasting impression of overshadowed progress. On Monday, World AIDS Day, Bush was heralded for his leadership in fighting the disease, a point that even his Democratic critics readily concede.

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Bush uses final 50 days in office to tout legacy

I don’t like George W. Bush. I voted FOR him, but that was because, as far as I was concerned, he was the lesser of all the evils, Republican, Democratic or any other choice. I am not a Republican. I am NOT Democrat. I am NOT a libber, I don’t blindly follow ANY party or their line of political BS. I am that rare commodity that *party parrots* fear. I am an American PATRIOT, I bow to no party. I answer to ME, I vote my conscience and I sleep quite well in doing so.

I’m not an economics guy. I look at the current issues regarding the economy and I have to rely on my friend and adviser, Jason Potts, at Lifetime Wealth Management, PC to be my eyes and ears on what to do with our money. My field of expertise is an altogether different area of endeavor. Jason tells me what HE thinks about the money markets, he’s the MBA and finance guy. I tell him what I think about tactics and strategy, that is where I did MY study.

I can tell you right now, had I been on the advisory staff when the decision was made to go into Iraq, I would have likely made the BIG news. Iraq was an ill-advised effort, nearly everyone in the national security and Intel business KNEW that. I KNOW that there were some advisers that told Bush the truth about Iraq, but the truth wasn’t what the man wanted to hear. He wanted to hear support and justifications. Here are some of my reasons for believing that Iraq, and the continued prosecution of that war, is the cause of the current financial maladies that this nation is suffering.

We are dumping BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of OUR tax dollars into one of the most oil rich nations on earth, and we are seeing NO return for OUR investment.

Personally, I would NEVER have gone to Iraq, not to attack. I would have gone under the guise of friend and ally to Saddam. That would have been the most logical effort to make in Iraq, make Saddam an ALLY, he hated Iran, he hated al-Qaida, he didn’t like us too much either but he would have taken any U.S. support he could have received.

Iraq was NOT worth the effort, the lives lost, the money spent, ANY of it, but Saddam may have been valuable had he been developed as an asset, not a TRUSTED ally or asset, but valuable none the less. He would have held Iran in check, thus leaving us free to pursue al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and Pakistan if need be, and to other areas as needed, the REAL enemy, where they actually were.

I don’t care what ANY of the Bush Bots say, Iraq was NOT a part of 9-11, Iraq did NOT support al-Qaida and there were NO Taliban or al-Qaida fighters IN Iraq until WE went there, al-Qaida came to Iraq to fight us.

Strategically, that may not have been an altogether bad thing if the truth were told. Iraq, especially the area around Baghdad, is a much easier theater of battle than the mountains of Afghanistan. The Russians suffered miserably in the rough terrain of Afghanistan, they were defeated by American supplied arms and Taliban guts. Pay attention to that last word, TALIBAN. We were supplying the Taliban with everything they needed as long as they were fighting the Russians. That old enemy of my enemy is MY friend thing.

In any case, Iraq equates to $10B a month that could be well spent elsewhere, because GWB surely didn’t have ANY idea that Iraq was better ground to fight upon, all GWB had was a hard-on for Saddam and the desire to see him dead. Damn the end results and consequences to the American or Iraqi people, ‘Daddy’ had to be vindicated, that was *Job 1* in George W. Bush’s mind.

And yes, I DO know, Saddam WAS evil personified, he was a monster, but only to his own people. Saddam was a threat to his region of the world, his immediate region, and if the people of that region didn’t have the balls to stand up to him, well hey, they were HIS people.

Bush has written his legacy, America is in a recession, we had a budget surplus when he took office. No more. Over 4,200 American service men and women were killed in Iraq, and for no REAL reason that I can see. We continue to pump BILLIONS of dollars into Iraq. We continue to lose troops lives in Iraq. Our border with Mexico is still wide open. The U.S. government became a SOCIALIST regime under Bush. Americans are on the verge of bankruptcy. We never got the *Drill Here - Drill Now* from Bush. We are still reliant on foreign oil, and as such, we are vulnerable to monetary blackmail. OPEC can strangle this nation any time they wish, simply by raising the price of oil to it’s recently high levels.

The legacy that Bush leaves behind will make Jimmy Carter look like a harmless old fool. I will reserve my opinion of Obama and his presidential prowess until such time that he really IS the POTUS.