credit crunch

Although it is a welcome sight to see gas prices dropping towards the $three-buck mark here in Nashville, I wouldn't run out and buy a new Hummer just yet...

Wall St. faces headwinds in dog days of summer
Agence France-Presse

The TimesOnline reports on the big environmental controversy across the pond: airlines flying mostly-empty planes on certain routes in/out of Heathrow in order to keep proprietorship of those routes.

Hmmm. Not sure if I would believe that, given that logic seems to indicate that if fewer folks are working, fewer houses will be bought, additional houses will enter foreclosure, and building new homes will slow as a result. But what do I know, eh?

"Meanwhile, real weekly wages have fallen compared to a year earlier in every month since October."

It's a bad time to be poor...

US workers paying the price for Wall Street’s debacle By Barry Grey

As the Labor Department reported earlier today, jobless claims are up.

A conservative nirvana of social Darwinism is descending on state budgets and odds are that weakest links are going to be the first big group of losers:

Coincidentally, EMI came out in favor of Nokia's Comes With Music plan on the same day news broke about Apple's early-stages talks about a similar device-plus-subscription bundle for its iPod and iPhone devices.

Housing starts have declined to a 16 year low.
Housing starts in December fell to their lowest level since 1991 as the credit crunch and slowdown in sales continued to hobble the industry, according to a report released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Privately owned units authorized by [...]

The AP proclaimed on November 29 that "The economy barreled ahead in the summer, growing at a 4.9 percent pace. The performance was the strongest in four years...," but also couldn't resist telling us that the momentum "...isn't expected to last through the current quarter amid the housing slump and credit crunch."

In a December 26 article on the booming gambling industry, the International Herald Tribune had to throw in "higher energy prices, a volatile stock market, a slumping housin

"BMO strategist Donald Coxe warns credit crunch and soaring oil prices will pale in comparison to looming catastrophe" - link.

Many more links about the biofuel hoax here, including my November essay, "The great biofuel hoax - and the evil resulting."