What Job Creation Numbers Don’t Tell Us

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"Job creation" is happening, sure, but what kind of jobs?

Have you noticed "the powers that be" employ an entirely different standard for measuring the health of America's job market than they use for the stock market? They're currently telling us that, "The job market is improving." What do they mean? Simply that the economy is generating an increase in the number of jobs available for workers. But when they say, "The stock market is improving," they don't mean that the number of stocks available to investors is on the rise. Instead, they're measuring the price, the value of the stocks. And isn't value what really counts in both cases? Quality over quantity. Employment rose by 217,000 jobs in the month of May, according to the latest jobs report -- and that brought us up to 8.7 million. That is how many new jobs the American economy has generated since the "Great Recession" officially ended in 2009 -- and it also happens to be the number of jobs that were lost because of that recession. You can break out the champagne, for the American economy is back, baby -- all of the lost jobs have been recovered! You say you don't feel "recovered"? Well, it's true that the U.S. population has kept growing since the crash, so about 15 million more working-age people have entered the job market, meaning America still has millions more people looking for work than it has jobs. And it's true that long-term unemployment is a growing crisis, especially for middle-aged job seekers who've gone one, two or more years without even getting an interview, much less an offer -- so they've dropped out of the market and are not counted as unemployed. Also, there are millions of young people who are squeezed out of this so-called recovery -- the effective unemployment rate for 18- to 29-year-olds is above 15 percent, more than double the national rate of 6.3 percent. But take heart, people, for economists are telling us that full employment may be right around the corner. Is that because Congress is finally going to pass a national job creation program to get America working again? Or could it be that corporate chieftains are going to bring home some of the trillions of dollars they've stashed in offshore tax havens to invest in new products and other job-creating initiatives here in the USA? No, no -- don't be silly. Economists are upbeat because they've decided to redefine "full" employment by -- hocus pocus! -- simply declaring that having 6 percent of our people out of work is acceptable as the new normal. And you thought American ingenuity was dead. Now, let's move on to the value of those jobs that have economists doing a happy dance. As a worker, you don't merely want to know that 217,000 new jobs are on the market; you want to know what they're worth -- do they pay living wages, do they come with benefits, are they just part-time and temporary, do they include union rights, what are the working conditions, etc.? In other words, are these jobs ... or scams? So, it's interesting that the recent news of job market "improvement" doesn't mention that of the 10 occupation categories projecting the greatest growth in the next eight years, only one pays a middle-class wage. Four pay barely above poverty level and five pay beneath it, including fast-food workers, retail sales staff, health aids and janitors. The job expected to have the highest number of openings is "personal care aide" -- taking care of aging baby boomers in their houses or in nursing homes. The median salary of an aid is under $20,000. They enjoy no benefits, and about 40 percent of them must rely on food stamps and Medicaid to make ends meet, plus many are in the "shadow economy," vulnerable to being cheated on the already miserly wages. To measure the job market by quantity -- with no regard for quality -- is to devalue workers themselves. Creating 217,000 new jobs is not a sign of economic health if each worker needs two or three of those jobs to patch together a barebones living -- and millions more are left with no work at all. [post_title] => What Job Creation Numbers Don't Tell Us [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => job-creation-numbers-dont-tell-us [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-11-23 00:54:52 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-11-23 08:54:52 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.humortimes.com/?p=26427 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

“Job creation” is happening, sure, but what kind of jobs? Have you noticed “the powers that be” employ an entirely different standard for measuring the health of America’s … Read more

That’s Rich! — An Exclusive Cartoon News Report

That’s Rich! — An Exclusive Cartoon News Report
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    [post_date] => 2013-11-06 14:19:22
    [post_date_gmt] => 2013-11-06 22:19:22
    [post_content] => 

Economy troubles? Bah, humbug! The rich are doing just fine, thank you very much.

Things are looking up...

that's rich

for the moneyed class.

rich vs poor

They are the way they are...

rich vs poor, food stamps

and that’s just the way it is.

government of the rich

They have the best representation money can buy...

tea party working for the rich

and as far as they can see, it’s all good.

shutdown didn't hurt the rich

Their congressmen work hard...

debt ceiling

but it’s not always easy.

debt ceiling boehner rich

 
Some info on the rich vs poor debate:
Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012. Hence, the top 1% captured 95% of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery. From 2009 to 2010, top 1% grew fast and then stagnated from 2010 to 2011. Bottom 99% stagnated both from 2009 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2011. In 2012, top 1% incomes increased sharply by 19.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 1.0%. In sum, top 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover.
-- From "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States," a report by Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley
 
Income inequality in the United States has grown significantly since the early 1970s, after several decades of stability, and has been the subject of study of many scholars and institutions. While inequality has risen among most developed countries, and especially English-speaking ones, it is highest in the United States...
Scholars and others differ as to the causes, solutions, and the significance of the trend, which in 2011 helped ignite the "Occupy" protest movement. Education and increased demand for skilled labor are often cited as causes, some have emphasized the importance of public policy; others believe the cause(s) of inequality's rise are not well understood. Inequality has been described both as irrelevant in the face of economic opportunity (or social mobility) in America, and as a cause of the decline in that opportunity.
Yale professor and economist Robert J. Shiller, who was among three Americans who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2013, believes that rising economic inequality in the United States and other countries is "the most important problem that we are facing now today."
-- From Wikipedia
[post_title] => That's Rich! -- An Exclusive Cartoon News Report [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => thats-rich-humor-times-cartoon-report [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-01-26 03:04:45 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-01-26 11:04:45 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.humortimes.com/?p=21509 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Economy troubles? Bah, humbug! The rich are doing just fine, thank you very much. Things are looking up… for the moneyed class. They are the way they are… … Read more

Things We Should Have Learned from the Recession

Things We Should Have Learned from the Recession
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    [post_date] => 2013-08-27 12:05:41
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An Unfunny Article: Things we should have learned from the recession

That when the chips are down and they are losing money, the big companies will give up their Ann Rand for Karl Marx and take bailout money from the government which is the worst type of socialism there ever was. [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="256"]recession just a transfer of wealth Adbusters poster advertising the original protest. From Wikipedia.[/caption] That banks, for all their smiley faced clerks and brochures, will slowly leach the financial foundation from under you that you slowly saved from working tedious, survival level paying jobs. They will do it sneakily through high charges on over drafts and other fees and on low interest payments on your savings because there is no way they are giving up their nice car, their nice house and their societal status for your sake. And they will continue to smile nicely while they do it. They would rather see you homeless and living in a shelter or losing your car and having to take buses and taxis to work than lose an iota of what they have collected in their homes on the other side of the gated community. That many employers, especially at the blue collar level, will put you into as servile, slavery like a position as possible to keep you working for as close to nothing as they can make you to maximize their intake of the financial flows of society. This includes paying you as little as possible so that you are always on the edge of survival and must return slave-like to work every day or lose what little you have accumulated. That 30 year home loans are essentially a way in which you give the banks your hard earned money over long periods of time during which they can pull the house out from under you at any time that you have financial difficulties. And they make sure that you don't have recourse to do a thing about it. That America has a class warfare going on in which the upper set has become proficient at manipulating companies, offices and other work situations in such a way as to : A. never having to do a physically strenuous or dirty job themselves. B. manipulate you, the worker, in such a way as to make you feel guilty or undeserving if you cannot do a job right or to meet expectations that they themselves cannot not meet. C. keep themselves at a higher rate of pay so that they can advance in life faster and gloat over being it better off than you. D. constantly make you look inferior, intimidate you, make you look bad in front of colleagues and other tricks to keep you under their thumb and out of their way. E. has design legal contracts, laws, governments to their advantage and against yours. F. and the best part of it is that they will pretend that no such class warfare exists and that everything is all lovey-dovey between all the stratus of our society. That there are forces on the upper class side of things so talented in the arts of slander, misinformation and intellectual sabotage as to undercut popular and powerful movements like Occupy Wall Street and help cause them to dissolve through the force of propaganda and manipulating public opinion alone. That many people in positions of economic power and position will defend that position through any means possible even to the point of mass murder. This is very well illustrated by President Assad of Syria's willingness to massacre thousands of his own people to retain his hold on his nation. That people in positions of power within companies, businesses or society who are part of the upper elite or aspire to there will look at you and have no interest in what you are as a human but will see in you only what in you there is that can be controlled or is a threat to them or will look for what is the easiest way to manipulate you. That no matter how friendly, self effacing, servile, or customer orientated a business is, its own bottom line will forever be taking care of itself first, which means either getting money from you or giving you as little money as possible for itself to survive. And, like the stone fortresses of the Middle Ages, they will generally fight to the death to defend their citadel. That the economists who lead us by the nose through our man- made economic disasters get into the profession because of avarice. They wish to have a lot of money and put themselves into financial positions through study and observation (although not necessarily any hard work) whereby they can manipulate the money institutions they inhabit and the creation of currency. Their hand over the affairs of the stock market and other financial systems is a selfish one. If they need develop a soft, reasonable speaking tone when they spew out their wise observations of how things should be managed it is because the work demands that he appear congenial and fair. If his society demands that he be strong and loud, he will be so in order to be the man in charge. Any overtures he makes to the 'plight of the working class' or the 'destruction of the middle class' are words that he needs to fill the air with to keep the common people believing in him and and that a wise, equality-minded leader is shepherding them through the chaos who has their interests at heart. Their first talent is to be a chameleon, their second to be anything of a 'scientific' nature towards economic policies. Their notions and motions in the finances of a nation are all toward their own pockets. That the working class of this nation are given no respect and no consideration. They are now at the level of the serfs of middle ages Europe; largely landless, at the mercy of the whims of his overseers, afraid to challenge the authority, dumbed down to the level of oxen and moved about like pawns on a gigantic chessboard. They (we) are fast being pushed in the direction of being the untouchables in a new age caste system, with the recent rules of caste being decided by the new Brahmins- the traditional rich and the new yuppies, both of whose rule is motivated by an intense interest in self and little in ones fellow man. Of course, they would not consider anyone outside their social circle 'one's fellow man' and would sneer their noses up in contempt at the idea. The same sort of sneer would jump to their faces if the ideals of he Constitution or of any Ghandi-esque ideas of human cooperation at all levels of society. (God forbid, that would interrupt the carefully woven social fabric!) That 'recession' is just a sanitized, polite, non-fear invoking way of saying 'depression'. [post_title] => Things We Should Have Learned from the Recession [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => things-learned-recession [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2019-03-19 12:09:22 [post_modified_gmt] => 2019-03-19 19:09:22 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.humortimes.com/?p=20576 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 2 [filter] => raw )

An Unfunny Article: Things we should have learned from the recession That when the chips are down and they are losing money, the big companies will give up … Read more

George W Bush Accepts Position as Court Jester for Obama Cabinet

George W Bush Accepts Position as Court Jester for Obama Cabinet
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    [post_content] => George W Bush was accepted on as the official court Jester for the Obama cabinet today. Appearing before the assembled advisers for the first time, W. had them suppressing giggles as soon as he opened his mouth.

[caption id="attachment_10702" align="alignright" width="376"]george bush GW Bush, happy to be back in the swing of things.[/caption]

"I am pleased as punch to be able to make this contribution to the nation. But I thought you said I was to be the 'Court Tester'? " said a perplexed Bush. "I'm not sure I understand what this position is all about."

"You will do just fine, Mr. Bush." said a reassuring President Obama. "You'll be a natural at it."

"That was a really strange interview process. I nevered knowed you had to be able to juggle balls for any of the Cabinet jobs. Every time I diderd it right they throwed me a fish."

Some of Obama's advisors were almost convulsing trying to maintain composure.

"This spandex is so tight my cahoonas might retract."

As a test the Cabinet had the former President read one of the speeches he gave during his term. He so mangled it that he passed the test.

"If he could learn a few magic tricks he would be perfect!" stated Hillary. "Just as long as he doesn't make a few billion disappear like he did during his term of office!"

A couple of the weaker willed Cabinet members fell to the floor and were rolling around holding their stomachs snickering. After a very successful first day Mr. Bush was given a cookie and a pat on the head by the President, which seemed to please him.

Although this was an embarrassment to the Republican Party, W.'s family was relieved that he finally found a job he was good at.

In related news Dick Cheney also found work as Chief Hand-Cutter-Offer and Chief Head-Cutter-Offer for Saudi Arabia.
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George W Bush was accepted on as the official court Jester for the Obama cabinet today. Appearing before the assembled advisers for the first time, W. had them … Read more

Corporate Mission Statements for Our Times

Corporate Mission Statements for Our Times
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    [post_date] => 2012-06-12 11:17:25
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    [post_content] => Mission statements are a modern attempt to give meaning and a face to a corporation's work in its never ending pursuit of profits. They are a statement on a business's real intents and purposes.

corporate mission statementsSupposedly.

The problem is that the face it makes is lopsided and the meaning is muddled. If corporate mission statements were to state their real intents and interests, they would probably look something like these:
To skin alive as many people as it takes to get our second home in the Bahamas. To be able to declare bankruptcy in a few months without anyone finding where we have stashed our wad. To raise enough money with our charity drives that we can live well and still have enough left over to send to the starving children in our posters. To see how far we can get with this sort of business before it becomes illegal. To have enough employees that we at the top levels never have to do any real work. We must work, so we might as well be doing this. To achieve the level of control and power over people that concentration camps had in as short a period of time as possible. To get enough dorks to buy our stupid products that we can afford to dress as cool as we know we are. To get enough good looking broads working here that getting laid is never a problem. If it weren't for this business we'd all be out being criminals. To sell enough junk to the lower classes that we can go out and buy nuevo-rich junk. If we didn't work, we'll start to mold. To use every dirty trick, every conniving nastity, to follow each dirty impulse possible to be Number 1 so that we can feel that we're better than everyone else. To produce a product so revolutionary, so far better than anyone else's, so new and wonderful that we can totally wipe out the competition and dominate the market. To work hard enough to create an illusion of respectability so that at night we can make as big of fools as we want to without recrimination. As Abe Lincoln once said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time." We are out to prove him wrong.
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Mission statements are a modern attempt to give meaning and a face to a corporation’s work in its never ending pursuit of profits. They are a statement on … Read more

Who Needs Wall Street Giants?

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    [post_content] => JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the handful of other behemoths of Wall Street that dominate American banking -- who needs them?

After enduring years of insatiable greed by the slick-fingered hucksters who run these gambling houses; after watching in dismay as their ineptness and avarice drained more than $19 trillion from America's household wealth since 2007 and plunged our real economy into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Depression; after witnessing their shameful demands for trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts to save their banks and their jobs; and now after seeing them return immediately to business as usual, including paying multimillion-dollar bonuses to themselves -- we have to ask: Huh!?!

"Oh, no-no," cry the banking titans, "don't even think of looking behind the curtain! Trust us," say these Wall Street alchemists, "for we are essential to juicing the economy with our complex abracadabra investment schemes."

In fact, however, those schemes just move money around, spiraling real investment capital from the grassroots up to super-rich global profiteers who create nothing but more wealth for themselves. Shell games at carnival sideshows are more honest than big-bank trading houses, for the hustles of such hucksters as JPMorgan, Goldman, B of A, etc, are based on financial illusions, off-the-books accounting, illegally leveraged borrowing, ridiculous tax subsidies and hide-the-pea secrecy.

The obvious truth is that these high-flying, high-tech, high-speed emporiums of high finance serve themselves, not us -- so we have no obligation or need to keep serving them. Of course we need banks -- to lend to us consumers and our productive businesses, to handle our commercial transactions, to manage our savings and provide financial advice, etc.

But that's not what the leviathans of Wall Street do. Rather than keep protecting them, let's decentralize America's capital, reinvesting our public trust in community banks and credit unions that actually deserve it and serve it.

This month has brought us yet another screaming example of a big-shot Wall Street banker who got too big for his britches -- a story revealing the inevitable excess that comes from banks that are simply too big.

In April, Jamie Dimon -- the swaggering chief of Wall Street's largest financial conglomerate, JPMorgan Chase -- had scoffed at critics who warned that his banks high-flying investment division was dangerously overextended and risking collapse. "A complete tempest in a teapot," scoffed Dimon. On May 10, however, Jamie's teapot exploded, blowing a $3 billion hole in the nation's largest bank ... and in Dimon's reputation.

Poor Jamie -- why didn't someone tell him?

Some tried. As early as 2009, JPMorgan's own internal risk managers raised concerns that this opaque division was pouring billions of dollars into speculative trades that were too large and too complex even to understand, much less manage. But their caution was dismissed, and Dimon himself pushed for more of these wondrous schemes, hailing them as perpetual profit-machines.

OK, the bank's execs were bedazzled by visions of sugary bonuses, but where were the federal regulators, who're supposed to dog banker excess? Shoved aside by Dimon. While the Federal Reserve and Comptroller of Currency had more than 100 inspectors imbedded in JPMorgan, none were in the reckless investment division. The bank's big-shot boss, who is politically wired to the top leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties in Washington, had aggressively pushed against having regulators hovering around his hot investment profit center, assuring them that nothing was happening in there worth watching.

Dimon had extra clout, for not only was he a Wall Street star sitting atop the biggest bank, but -- get this -- he also has a seat on the board of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, which has regulatory authority over Wall Street and will now conduct the inquiry into JPMorgan's disastrous risk-taking. Yes, Jamie the Fed official will investigate Jamie the banker.

This is proof again that these banks are simply too big -- too big for managers, regulators and the public interest. We don't need yet another regulatory Band-Aid, we need Teddy Roosevelt to bust 'em up.
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JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the handful of other behemoths of Wall Street that dominate American banking — who needs them? After enduring years of … Read more

The Republican Plan to Improve the Economy if They Take Over… er… Are Elected

The Republican Plan to Improve the Economy if They Take Over… er… Are Elected
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    [post_date] => 2012-04-16 11:02:43
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How GOP candidates will improve the economy if elected:

Start a new war to refocus attention away from the bad state of national affairs, and to bolster arm sales and allow corporate 'service' interests to leech money off the taxpayers to 'support' the military effort. Start a 'Threat To Be Terrified Of ' of the week campaign. [caption id="attachment_8350" align="alignright" width="400" caption="One way Republicans will improve the economy is by turning all national parks into golf courses."]improve the economy by turning national parks into golf courses[/caption] Turn all National Parks into huge golf courses which will hire the locals that haven't been evicted to work at the menial jobs. Turn each State government over to a corporate entity to run. All residents of the state will lose their citizenship and automatically become employees of the corporation. The State of New York will become the state of Dow Jones, Illinois will become Armour Meats, Kansas will be known as Monsanto and Washington State as Wehrhausen, for example. The only state to retain its original name will be Texas, although the name will be adjusted to Texas Instruments. Do workers a 'favor' by allowing them to work three jobs to survive. Fence off Washington D.C. from anyone without connections or with an income under $150,000. Allow people to live at their job site so they don't have to be paid as much and they can be at work earlier. Giving foreign workers 'Serf' status as long they stay at menial jobs and do not try to advance economically. Start a 'Be A Patriot And Get a Second Job' club in your hometown. Give the unemployed minimum wage jobs demolishing the very houses they lost to foreclosure. Since the banks cannot sell them, the Uber-rich can use the empty land spaces to expand the property of their second, third and fourth homes. Move the homeless out to floating barges in the ocean where they won't sully up the downtown areas and they can fish to survive. If they die at sea, they can be buried in the ocean and not take up valuable land space in the cities with their graves. Make Walmart the only store for the lower class that is allowed  to get a business license and ban the rest, so there will be more room for ritzy outlet and specialty stores for the rich, since they will shortly be the only ones to have money anyway. Allow drilling in people's backyards. Create an economic stimulus for the upper classes by making slavery legal again.  

How Democrats will improve the economy if re-elected:

Cave in to everything the Republicans want.   [post_title] => The Republican Plan to Improve the Economy if They Take Over... er... Are Elected [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => republican-plan-to-improve-the-economy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2013-07-13 17:27:52 [post_modified_gmt] => 2013-07-14 00:27:52 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.humortimes.com/?p=8328 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

How GOP candidates will improve the economy if elected: Start a new war to refocus attention away from the bad state of national affairs, and to bolster arm … Read more

Subprime Lender Reduced to Lending to Homeless for Cardboard Box Homes

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A major subprime lender, Loans4You, which was not quite major enough to get a bailout from the government like Baer Sterns did, has "found new life" making loans to homeless people for cardboard boxes to sleep in.

"Sure, it doesn't sound so good at first," said company spokesman Joseph R. Canterwaller, "but consider that we are helping the very people affected by the subprime crisis. Many of these folks became homeless as a result of our bad loans, so we feel an obligation to respond to their needs." He also pointed out that many lesser subprime lenders have gone under completely, and that as survivors, the company is "helping to bolster the economy by staying afloat."

"We provide entry-level loans for new box-owners, and our cardboard homes are made from the toughest refrigerator cartons available. We specifically tailor our loans to the needs of our customers, even covering two or three-room shelters," Mr. Canterwaller said.

Answering critics who say such companies make risky loans, the Loans4You spokesman said, "These loans are rock solid. We've done background checks on all our customers, which is something we never did before, as you know. While we know they don't have jobs, we still require that applicants be resourceful, hard workers. Most engage their entire family, from toddlers to spouses, in such gainful employment as dumpster diving, restaurant backdoor begging, street panhandling and the like."

Others in the loan industry see this as a positive development as well. Steven Stackhouse of payday lenders Cash and Carry, Inc. told this reporter, "These loans can be packaged and sold to brokering houses, who package them with other groups of loans, resell them, and so on - creating wealth all along the chain. This could revive the entire economy!" When asked if this wasn't the cause of the crisis in the first place, Stackhouse replied, "Doesn't matter. It's all cyclical. If we can prop up the economy for another ten years, by then who knows what will come along? Perhaps a dotcom boom!" [post_title] => Subprime Lender Reduced to Lending to Homeless for Cardboard Box Homes [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => subprime-lender-reduced-to-lending-to-homeless-for-cardboard-box-homes [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2012-01-27 23:57:52 [post_modified_gmt] => 2012-01-28 07:57:52 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://wp.humortimes.com/?p=379 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

>A major subprime lender, Loans4You, which was not quite major enough to get a bailout from the government like Baer Sterns did, has “found new life” making loans … Read more

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