Rob noticed something uncanny about this sign spinner advertising for a local jewelry store. He was drawn in by her defined features and lifeless gaze, and the expert way in which she moved the sign in the exact same motion every time. Upon closer inspection, he realized that she was no ordinary sign spinner, but an android! [More]
economy
Don't Worry About The Economy, People Are Buying Pickup Trucks
By 11.18.10
Everything is going to be just cupcakes, at least judging by how pickup trucks are selling. [More]
FDIC Seizes 4 More Banks
By 11.9.10
The FDIC seized four more banks on Friday. That brings the total number for 2010 to 143, the most in a year since the S&L fiasco back in the 80’s. Here’s who went down: [More]
"Adversely Possessing" Empty Houses: Robin Hood Or Fraudster?
By 11.9.10
Citing a law from the 1850’s, Mark is going around Florida looking for foreclosed and abandoned houses and filing paperwork to try to claim their deeds. It’s called “adverse possession.” [More]
Doomgraph: This Recession's Unemployment vs Other Recessions
By 11.5.10
Time to crap your pants. [More]
US Added 151,000 Jobs In October, Where's Mine?
By 11.5.10
Beating expectations, the US added 151,000 jobs in October, for the first time since May. Analysts had projected only a 60,000 gain. It wasn’t enough to nudge the unemployment rate, however, which held at 9.6%. [More]
Walk With A Family Walking Away From Their House
By 10.28.10
What’s it like to walk away from your house? No, not to go down the street to get some ice cream. Walk away like mailing the keys to your mortgage lender and saying, “Take it. It cost me more than it’s worth.” Immoral? Perilous to future job prospects? Is it “just business?” NPR follows along with one couple grappling with these very questions. [More]
Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman
By 10.25.10
Michael can make around $1,000 a week trawling through used book and thrift stores and library sales with his trusty Dell PDA. He scans the barcode, looks up the price on Amazon, and if he sees that he can sell it online for more than he can buy it in the store, he purchases it. It’s an intense, lonely grind, and it makes him feel a little bit sleazy. [More]
Loan Mod Denied Because Family Saved Too Much, Now Heading To Foreclosure
By 10.25.10
This family sought a loan mod after the father had his hours cut at work, making it hard for them to make their regular monthly payments. They followed the advice of housing counselors, reducing expenses and saving up money. Finally, PNC Bank told them their loan was denied. The $7,160 they saved up, which included a $5,218 tax refund, meant they were too well off to qualify. Now their house heads towards foreclosure. [More]
TARP Earned Taxpayers 8.2% Return
By 10.20.10
For all the Cronenberg-style chest-flesh-yanking the bank bailout generated, gone almost unnoticed is that the damn thing actually made money. [More]
The Real Underemployment Figure Is 22.5%
By 10.19.10
Ever get the feeling that things are a lot worse than everyone is letting on? [More]
Banks Hired "Burger King Kids" To Process Mortgages
By 10.14.10
JPMorgan & Chase had a cute name, the “Burger King Kids,” for the workers with little no experience or qualifications it hired to process the reams of mortgages it plowed through at the height of the housing bubble. These walk-in hires “barely knew what a mortgage was,” writes the NYT. The newbies Citigroup and GMAC/Ally Bank outsourced the work to sometimes tossed paperwork into the garbage can. [More]
Delusional Thieves Caught Stealing Entire Mansions
By 10.13.10
A ring of confused folk in Georgia are stealing entire million-dollar homes, deeding themselves the property with bogus paperwork and squatting inside. [More]
Fed Might Buy $500B In Treasuries
By 10.13.10
The Fed sent out signals that it could be making a major new move as soon, which experts think could take the form of buying back up to $500 billion in Treasury Bonds. They could decide as soon as their next meeting on November 2nd, which also happens to be Election Day. [More]
Corps. Gobbling Up Cheap Debt Instead Of Hiring
By 10.6.10
You can’t get a loan but Microsoft sure can, and it’s taking advantage of uber-low interest rates to raise billions by selling bonds. Why? “Because they can,” writes NYT. They’re not alone, across the board companies are plumping up their cash reserves so they can take advantage when the economy turns around, but it’s unlikely to anytime soon if companies keep saving instead of creating jobs. What came first, the chicken or the nest egg? [More]
Interactive Graph Of Bank Failures Like Watching Nuclear Impact Zones
By 9.28.10
The one joy of WSJ’s otherwise mirthless interactive graph showing bank failures across the country from Jan ’08 to present is that when you slide the time scroller back and forth, it looks like, as Marketplace’s Paddy Hirsch just tweeted, looks like a series of nuclear impact zones. [More]
Do We Need A Little Inflation To Get The Economy Moving?
By 9.28.10
Inflation is good, at the right time, and in moderate amounts. Like adding just a smidge during a recession when there’s a lot of people in debt. Knowing that prices will rise, some consumers and businesses are prodded to crack open their pocketbooks. The value of debts drop, easing the burden on strapped borrowers. Having used up a lot of options already, the Fed could slightly raise its inflation target and let prices slowly rise over the next few years, but they’re unlikely to announce anything remotely close to that in their meeting this week. Namely because people really really really hate inflation. Why is that? [More]
SmartyPig Slices Interest Rate To 1.75%
By 9.24.10
SmartyPig just cut the interest rate on its online savings accounts from an ahead of the pack 2.15% to 1.75%, unless you have $50,000 or more in your account. [More]
