Lattes with Logan: DIY Lattes for the Recessed Latte Liberal April 28, 2009

Ever since I got put on half-time for half-pay because of the Recession, I’ve been saving money wherever possible. One way I save a ton of money is by making my own lattes in the morning. I didn’t spend hundreds of dollars on a latte machine either. Instead, I use some very simple tools and ingredients to make a yummy latte for less than $1 per day. Check it out:

Bonjour Primo latte frother | Stove top espresso maker

(Please excuse the poor title slides and credit slides. I’m still learning how to use iMovie!)

Slate’s Interactive Job Loss Map April 23, 2009

Slate’s Interactive Job Loss map is so freaking cool and informative. It shows the job gains and losses over the last two and a half years. Notice how the Bay Area kept posting job gains until about August 2008? The losses really pile up in tech-heavy SF around November/December 2008. That about sums up my experience with incoming projects too. We were pretty busy through about August/September of 2008 and then things slowed waaay down. And, they’ve stayed slow. No wonder! Now I have the big red circle on the map to validate that I’m not alone.

Make sure to click over to Slate and interact with the map yourself!

Mint.com’s Great Map of Stimulus Job Creation April 23, 2009

Check out the map (below) that Mint.com featured on where the stimulus jobs will be created. What’s more, over at their site they show a table with unemployment numbers and number of jobs created. Definitely worth taking a look at.

Also posted on Loganotron.

Small(er) World April 22, 2009

The global economy is shrinking for the first time since World War II, the AP reports. Economists at the IMF are predicting between  a 1.5 and 2% reduction.. This translates to fifteen to twenty-five million people who will lose their jobs. That figure, of course, should be added to the millions already out of work.

I think this is a good time for questioning. It’s time to ask ourselves what kind of economic system we want and what foundation it will be built upon. The environmentally destructive consumer industry we’ve developed in the last half-century has proven to be unsustainable in more ways than one.

I will never forget October 23, 2008, when Allan Greenspan admitted that he had “found a flaw,” in the capitalist free market ideology. It was the first time in my life any institutional representative had ever admitted the possibility of an imperfection in the system we generally hold in high esteem. While I subscribe to capitalism (if only because I’ve generally personally benefited from the system), I do think honest, non-politicized dialogue about economic ideas are important. Cheer leading one system, without regard for the negative side affects of that system, is ludicrous.

I wonder how we can do it better.

Luck April 21, 2009

I’m happy to be working again. It feels good to be productive, to be earning money and to have some sense of security. Over the last week I’ve realized, however, that it’s very easy to quickly get caught up in work and the rat race and forget or ignore what other people are going through.

I was struck by the individual stories in the NYTimes segment, Living with Less, about how individuals being affected. They profile Mark Cooper, for example, who used to be an executive at a Fortune 500 company managing over 250 people. Now he’s working as a janitor to ensure he keeps health insurance since his wife is a breast cancer survivor and won’t be insurable, if they go uninsured even temporarily. Closer to home, one of my good friends’ father, who used to own a BMW dealership, is now delivering newspapers.

I can’t and won’t take having a job for granted and I won’t forget that I’m lucky to have found work.

Mint.com’s Visual Guide to the Real Unemployment Rate April 21, 2009

This is absolutely awesome. I love Mint.com’s blog!

Also posted on Loganotron.

The Real Unemployment Rate? Try 15.6% April 20, 2009

Via Catherine Holahan on MSN Money:

An 8.5% unemployment rate is unmistakably bad. It’s the highest rate since 1983 — a year that saw double-digit unemployment, nearly 30 commercial bank failures and more than 15% of Americans living below the poverty line.

But the real national unemployment rate is far worse than the U.S. Department of Labor’s March figure, announced today, shows. That’s because the official rate doesn’t include the 3.7 million-plus people who are reluctantly working only part time because of the poor labor market. And it doesn’t include the workers who have given up scouring want ads for seemingly nonexistent jobs.

When those folks are added to the numbers, the unemployment rate rises to 15.6%. In March 2008, that number was 9.3%. more…

Also posted on Loganotron.

Logan’s CA WorkShare (i.e. Partial Unemployment) Saga April 17, 2009

Two months ago my company reduced my hours to half-time and started paying me half-pay. They did this to try to avoid laying me off during this not-so-great economic time. Not long after, my good friend Apollo informed me about California’s WorkShare program. WorkShare is a division of the EDD (Unemployment dept.) and it allows employers who reduce their employees’ hours (instead of laying them off) to apply for partial unemployment benefits.

In my case, because I was reduced by 50% I am eligible for 50% of what I’d normally earn on unemployment. Normally I would receive $450 per week if I were completely unemployed. Under WorkShare I am eligible to receive $225 per week. That’s about $1000 per month which will definitely help me survive this downturn and reduction in pay.

Enter the bureaucratic nightmare that is the EDD. My company enrolled in the program in mid-February. I got my initial paperwork from the EDD around that time informing me that I’d been enrolled (which is apparently different than processed). Every two weeks my employer and I submit a form listing the details of my continued part-time employment. I have dutifully submitted these forms since mid-February.

Welcome Logan! April 13, 2009

Living through this recession has truly made a national news story a personal experience. Part of that experience is having known so many other people, friends, (former) colleagues and family who have been affected by it also. Now that I’m going to begin working again, I’ve asked some of them to join me on Recessed to share their stories.

Please welcome my very dear friend Logan. Watch the video below to hear him talk about his experience of being recessed and reduced; he has recently been put on part time at work. Logan has a really awesome job as a professional “namer,” he names things! Hear him explain more about naming and branding and how he’s responding to his new challenges:

Fearing Fear Itself April 9, 2009

The NYTimes ran another interesting story and an interactive feature about the recession and how the stress is “seeping into everyday lives.” The article is mostly based on anecdotal evidence, with a few statistic thrown in, but it seems true. Economic hardships, or more acutely, the fear of them, is really stressing people out. One woman, Anne Hubbard, reported losing 12 pounds just from reading economic reports and getting sick to her stomach about things.

Calm down people.

FDR really understood the American psyche when he said in his first inaugural address, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Americans are made neurotic so easily. What happened to being a country of entrepreneurs and industrious go-getters ready to take on a challenge? I can remember a time when people like Ms. Hubbard would be marketing a new diet fad and capitalizing on her success at losing weight.

It also strikes me as important to look at things relatively. We’re rich! Sure, we’re rich as individuals, because we have friends and families, but as a country we’re also just really wealthy compared with much of the world. I’ve seen poverty in really poor countries and it looks a lot worse than most of the scenes here. It’s certainly worse than the hardships people like Ms. Hubbard might endure.

What’s the point of having nice things, fancy cars, big houses, nice clothes, if all it breeds is fear of losing it anyway?