indessed roscivs

CNN posted an article today entitled, “Bloody Monday”—referring to the host of layoffs that major companies have been announcing due to the recent economic downturn.

The final week of January began with a bloodbath for the job market, as over 71,400 more cuts were announced on Monday alone.

At least six companies from manufacturing and service industries announced cost-cutting initiatives that included slashing thousands of jobs.

More than 200,000 job cuts have been announced so far this year, according to company reports. Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.

Back in October, people were comparing the stock market crash to that of the Great Depression—but it seems odd, given our perceptions of the events of that time period. Our lifestyles didn’t change much in the last three months—we didn’t have a lot of capital tied up in the stock market or the housing market, so when things dropped we were relatively unscathed. But even looking around, it doesn’t seem like the Great Depression at all. Was it really like this back in the ’30s? A graph of the stock market crashes over the past hundred years shows that the current recession is looking depressingly similar to that of 1929—it’s certainly worse than any crash since then. But it doesn’t feel like a Great Depression, does it?

Well, I decided to look up a Great Depression timeline of events. Perhaps the poverty and destruction of wealth we associate with the Great Depression didn’t happen immediately in the few months after the stock market crash, but took longer to manifest themselves? Perhaps this is what it was like three months after Black Tuesday—nobody really thought it would be a big deal, and weren’t directly affected by what happened initially. timeline says that, after a few months, not much had happened:
[T]he Federal Reserve has cut the prime interest rate from 6 to 4 percent. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon announces that the Fed will stand by as the market works itself out: “Liquidate labor, liquidate real estate … values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wreck from less-competent people”.

By the end of 1930 (the equivalent of our end of 2009), the GNP had fallen 9.4 percent from the previous year. The unemployment rate had climbed from 3.2 to 8.7 percent—nowhere near the 15-20% unemployment rate we typically associate with the Depression. (In comparison, in December 2008 the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent. I don’t know what it will be at the end of January, after the fallout of “Bloody Monday”.) I’m not sure what the GNP or unemployment rate will be at the end of this year, but I don’t see 1930-type levels as being unrealistic.

1932 and 1933 were the worst years of the Great Depression—the equivalent of our 2011 and 2012—with GNP falling 31 percent compare to 1929, and unemployment at 23.6 percent. Industrial stocks had lost 80 percent of their value since 1930. 40% of all banks that existed in 1929 had gone under.

What will our 2011 and 2012 look like? Obviously the market has some “adjusting” to do. Will it finish its adjustments by the end of this year, and be on its way back up soon? Or is this only the beginning, with 2009 looking positively sunny compared to what is yet to come?

President Obama (yes, it really is President Obama now) was inaugurated yesterday, and millions around the world were watching. But some were even watching from outer space:

http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/20/pictures-president-obamas-inauguration-as-seen-from-space/

I’ve been poking through the indessed logs recently, to see how many people visit this site, and why. One of the interesting things to look at is the list of Google queries that bring people here—I’m on the first page of Google hits for a surprising range of interesting terms.

While not on the first page of Google hits, one interesting search query that has brought people to indessed has been the word “shishkaberries”—an apparently uniquely Seattle-ish treat of overpriced fruit stuck on a shish-ka-bob stick.

So, in attempt to be helpful to all those Google visitors searching for information about Shishkaberries, here’s my Shishkaberry Roundup:

The New Awesome experienced Shishkaberries the same place I did—at Bumbershoot, the awesome music festival held at the Seattle Center every year. For a whole weekend, you get to lounge around in the rare Seattle sun, listening to all sorts of music—from rap to rock to folk and back again.

Meanwhile, The Stranger complains about Shishkaberries at the Seattle Mariners games—apparently the sign says “Shiskaberry’s”, not “Shishkaberries”, offending the apostrophe sensabilities of the poster, Anthony Hecht.

The WhySeattleSportsSuck blog has a different take on the Shishkaberry subject. Their beef is that for five strawberries, you have to shell out five smackers—that is to say, one buck per strawberry (ignoring the delicious chocolateyness topping them). The author asserts that “this is why we’re in an economic crisis—banks lending out money they don’t even have so customers can run around willy-nilly throwing stacks of money off of bridges and paying a dollar for a strawberry.” Overpriced fruit kabobs representing the fundamentals of our econoomy? They might be on to something …

Summer of Matt also posted in the sports groove, but in a more positive note. He lauded the surprising variety of food available at Safeco Field, which apparently goes beyond the usual hot dog and nacho fare present at your typical stadium. Apart from Shishkaberries (”the coolest/most unique thing [he'd] seen”), he also mentioned garlic fries, BBQ, sake, and sushi—including the “Ichiroll”, a spicy tuna sushi roll named after the Seattle star, Ichiro Suzuki.

All this talk of food is making me hungry. I think I’ll go fix myself a snack.