The scope of the financial disaster created by Bush's unleashing of Wall Street is becoming obvious at last.
Skittish employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years, catapulting the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, dramatic proof the country is careening deeper into recession.
The new figures, released by the Labor Department Friday, showed the crucial employment market deteriorating at an alarmingly rapid clip, and handed Americans some more grim news right before the holidays.
As companies throttled back hiring, the unemployment rate bolted from 6.5 percent in October to 6.7 percent last month, a 15-year high.
And this is only the beginning. As fear begins to penetrate the obtuse and illusory optimism that has fueled Wall Street's blind greed, there will be more - much more - of them trying to save their asses by sacrificing workers rather than profits for as long as they can get away with it. Yesterday AT&T announced that it was laying off 12,000 people starting immediately.
Merry Christmas.
Henry Paulson, having finally noticed that folks other than his rich Wall Street colleagues and cohorts are in real trouble and gotten it through his thick Ivy League skull that their trouble is what's causing The Street's trouble, announced last week - with that brilliant Bushian timing he's known for, just before Thanksgiving - that, since he has given away some $$$3Tril$$$ to bankers and corporate executives for parties, vacations, and bigger jets, he might as well throw a few bones to the victims of their scams. Yesterday he released a few details. (Enjoy Edmund Andrews' sarcasm in graf 1.)
After pouring vast amounts of money into financial institutions of almost every type, and having little to show for it, the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve are suddenly taking a new look at ordinary homeowners.
Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned on Thursday that the soaring number of foreclosures threatened the economy. He then proposed some ideas — government-engineered loan modifications, and more taxpayer money to help people refinance — to keep people in their homes.
“The public policy case for reducing preventable foreclosures does not rely solely on the desire to help people who are in trouble,” Mr. Bernanke said. “More needs to be done.”
At the Treasury Department, meanwhile, top officials continued to work on a plan to bolster the housing market by subsidizing 30-year home mortgages with rates as low as 4.5 percent — a level that home buyers have not seen since the early 1960s.
(emphasis added)
So with the economy collapsing around his ears, Henry finally decides to do something, you know, sensible. 'Bout time, you might think. But the question is, is it too little or too late? Compared to the $3T Bloomberg calculated Henry gave to the upper crust of thieves, the $350B he's making available to homeowners is a drop in the bucket, and while lowered interest rates would have helped a lot a year ago, they will most likely be too late now to help people whose homes have already been foreclosed on, much less those who've been evicted. Depending on how he writes the eligibility rules, it's not even clear it will stem the tide of foreclosures and evictions already in the pipeline.
But he means well, gawd help us.
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