Wailing Into The Void

New jobless claims continue to beat expectations.  If only there were some jobless claims index or jobless claims derivative I could sink my cash into.

I got laid off this past Friday as my former employer goes into deep hibernation.  While this gives me much more time to blog I feel less motivated than ever to do so.  But since I’m here now for whatever reason, I might as well write about something, right?  Well, here goes…

This guy is a major asshole.

This concludes my blogging day.

Forest Hills’ LIRR station isn’t looking so hot these days.

Today is Cyber Monday, in case you didn’t know.

There’s a lot of grumbling about the Citigroup bailout among the economically initiated.  To a layperson such as myself there seems to be more than a whiff of “we’re making this up as we go along” coming from Washington these days.

(via Paul Krugman)

Are we now in the midst of a bailout bubble?

Even the religious right is cutting back.

Looks like we just bought up a big chunk of AIG. 

Under the new plan, the government will buy $40 billion of AIG preferred stock, a step that puts AIG on par with major U.S. banks, which the government partially nationalized last month. Another $52.5 billion will be used to take troubled assets off of the company’s books.

Once upon a time (around, say, earlier this year) $40 billion and $52.5 billion were staggering sums.  Now it seems like this kind of cash gets ponied up with barely any fuss.

The NYT has an interesting piece this morning on one of the perils of devising a mortgage bailout plan: that it may provide an incentive for people who don’t really need help to stop  making their payments.

I’m not an economist, but I’m guessing there are a low number of Starbucks stores in Italy for a similar reason there are zero Pizza Huts there.