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Keeping your gig

With so many people losing jobs, what are you doing to hold onto yours? Marketplace has heard of folks being forced to take paid vacation days or go on unpaid furlough. Will giving up bonus checks and raises be enough to keep you and your colleagues on the payroll into the new year? Let us know.

Devastating job losses

More than a half-million American workers lost jobs last month, the biggest drop in payrolls since late 1974. Economist Peter Morici emailed this morning that the threat of a widespread depression is now real and present.

The economy has shed 1.9 million jobs since December…Unemployment increased to 6.7 percent in November; however, factoring in discouraged workers, unemployment is closer to 8.7 percent. Add workers in part time positions that cannot find full time employment and the hidden unemployment rate is nearly 13 percent.

Look for a government stimulus package to be fast-tracked.

Going Down Under

Australian press reports job cuts at Macquarie Group, one of the country’s biggest banks, may have topped 1000. If so, that’d be about 10 percent of Macquarie employees in Australia, its home base. Erik Jensen in the Sydney Morning Herald says bankers were taken very much by surprise.

They locked the doors down on our level, said we had a meeting. Then they just went around, one by one: ‘Here’s your letter, goodbye,”’ a senior infrastructure analyst, now redundant, said. “This is no earth tremor, it’s an earthquake. It’s f—-ed. It just came out of nowhere.”

Oil skids

Crude prices hit 4-year lows after Merrill Lynch predicted a drop to $25 a barrel. Bloomberg quotes Chip Hodge of MFC Global: “We’ve got the U.S, U.K., Europe and Japan all in recession for the first time since World War II, and the oil market is reacting.”

Preventing foreclosure

Fed chair Bernanke wants more taxpayer money to prevent additional home foreclosures. Brian Blackstone reports for the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Bernanke estimated that lenders are on track to initiate 2.25 million foreclosure proceedings this year, more than double the rate before the crisis. He also cited estimates showing as many as 15% to 20% mortgages may be “under water,” meaning more is owed on the house than it is worth.

Highland Fling

Dealbreaker is reporting that 2,800 heads will roll at Royal Bank of Scotland. This morning, Credit Suisse bid au revoir to 5,300 in investment banking. According to Bloomberg, 200,000 bank and insurance jobs have been lost since the financial crisis began.

Fewer jobs, fewer buyers

Unemployment checks are now going to more Americans than any time in the last 26 years. Just this morning, AT&T, DuPont and Viacom announced layoffs. Dwindling job security is one reason retail sales were weak last month.

Paulson's new plan

The Treasury Department is apparently toying with an idea to drive down mortgage rates. If it works, the Washington Post reports the rate on a 30-year fixed-loan could drop to 4.5 percent.

The wild card is whether homebuyers will qualify.

Dubai Eight Months Later

You may remember last March when Marketplace broadcast its shows from Dubai. Back then a barrel of oil was around 110 dollars, and Dubai was the ripsnorting financial center of the Persian Gulf. Now crude is less than half that value, dropping today below 47 dollars. Take a guess on what’s been happening to Dubai’s economy. The answer is in this story from Business Week.

Show me the money...

Looking to get yourself a chunk of the bailout?

Wondering how to go about it?

Vanity Fair’s Bruce Feirstein has the form you need to fill out.

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