NY Governor: "We Have to Start Making the Deficit Reductions on Our Own"

AP (via Google): Unable to get the Legislature to agree on how to address a $3.2 billion deficit, New York Gov. David Paterson said he's taking $1.6 billion worth of temporary, emergency measures to cover the state's December bills...

"I feel that we have to start making the deficit reductions on our own, hoping the Legislature will join us," Paterson said in a teleconference with reporters on Sunday. "This is the point where other states went off the cliff. This is where they should have acted and didn't."

He referred to even larger deficits in California and other states where officials were forced to borrow long term, miss payments that hurt their credit rating, issue IOUs, layoff workers, release prisoners early and close most libraries.

"Pushing any more problems down the road is unacceptable to me," he said, criticizing the Legislature for lack of action on the deficit since September. "My question is, when are they going to do their job?"

Forward: Dec. 9

+ NYTimes' Select Editorials on New York State Government

Brooklyn Industries CEO: "Our Real Passion Was Not In Manufacturing But In Retail"

Lexy Funk via BusinessWeek*: "About a third of our clothing at Brooklyn Industries is made in China by four factories run by families...

Before I decided to outsource our manufacturing, I did my homework on China... But in the end what really formed my opinion was running my own factory in Brooklyn.

The [manufacturing] challenge... how to find legal and competent sewers while running a production line that was efficient and economical... It was hard to maintain quality...

We knew we couldn't grow our business without being able to find good, legal sewers -- a situation that was already proving to be difficult... Plus, we still didn't have heat and couldn't afford to move out and get an apartment. Manufacturing was beginning to lose its appeal...

In 2000 we had made enough money to move out of the factory and into our own apartment, just as I had my first child. At the same time we decided that our real passion was not in manufacturing but in retail... we weren't particularly good at manufacturing, and besides, things had just gotten more difficult. In 2001 we closed the factory and switched primarily to retail."

Rewind: Summer 2009: On the Waterfront: From WNYC: "Funk says the big risk is that the bank decides Brooklyn Industries is not meeting expectations and pulls the company's credit line. So far, the bank continues to lend to Brooklyn Industries. And Brooklyn Industries is trying to adapt, as it watches some of its neighbors on Smith Street go out of business."

*BusinessWeek two weeks ago: From NYPost: "Norman Pearlstine, Bloomberg's chief content officer and soon-to-be chairman of BusinessWeek, cut an estimated 130 people from BusinessWeek's staff of around 400... The cuts were deepest on the editorial side, where insiders say an estimated 60 to 70 editorial types are going... Bloomberg LP, agreed to pay $9.3 million for the company and assume some liabilities including severance payments. The deal, announced last month, is expected to be completed by Dec. 5."

Christmas Plants

178 Smith Street: Burned

"Fork This" Melissa and George Motz Win Chili Takedown

Sunday, November 22, 2009: The Bell House on 7th Street in Brooklyn:



Chili Takedown winners announced to the world via Twitter:

twitter.com/forkthis: "Holy crap! My chili won first prize from the judges..."

twitter.com/BlondieBrownie: "George Motz is the Peoples Choice winner..." (Photos and more text at blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com.)

Next takedown: Cookies.

Rewind: Previous weekend at the Bell House.

Warren Understands "Appalling Divide Between How TARP Was Sold a Year Ago and What TARP Has Turned Into"

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Rewind: October 14, 2009: Wall Street & Washington vs. the Country

NYC's Real Gross City Product Dropped 1.6% Last Quarter

Reuters via Forbes: New York City's economy contracted 1.6 percent in the third quarter, in its seventh straight quarterly decline even as the national economy grew, City Comptroller William Thompson said on Wednesday.

The decline in the Real Gross City Product, the broadest measure of the city's economy, came as the U.S. economy grew by an estimated 3.5 percent in the third quarter...

Roopa Kalyanaraman Marcello Wins Brooklyn Chocolate Experiment

Sunday, November 15, 2009 at the Bell House on 7th Street (near 2nd Avenue and Gowanus Canal):









Roopa's online ("Raspberry Eggplant") at...
twitter.com/rspberryeggplnt
facebook.com/raspberryeggplant
raspberryeggplant.blogspot.com

...and in business ("Raspberry Bakeshop") at raspberrybakeshop.com.

Her photos of the Brooklyn Chocolate Experiment are at picasaweb.google.com/roopa916/15BrooklynChocolateExperiment

More on the Brooklyn Chocolate Experiment at thefoodexperiments.com and carnivoreheartsherbivore.wordpress.com.

Fast-forward: August 9, 2010: “I have a full-time job that I love, so I’m not trying to be at every event in Brooklyn,” said Roopa Kalyanaraman, the cupcake mastermind behind Raspberry Bakeshop. “But it occurred to me, that if I’m making a cake for a friend of a friend’s birthday party, why shouldn’t I get paid for it?”

Kalyanaraman’s cupcakes are a hit for their unique flavors...

10 Years After the Berlin Wall Fell, Another Wall Fell

On November 12, 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (the separation of commercial and investment banks). Unlike the Berlin Wall that divided Germany, this wall should not have been torn down.



PBS.org: Video timeline: The tide of deregulation; the drumbeat of warnings

Update: November 12, 2009:

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Union Street: Road Repair

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

(Video: How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin, Part 1 of 6 via YouTube)

Time Magazine, November 1989:

What happened in Berlin last week was a combination of the fall of the Bastille and a New Year's Eve blowout, of revolution and celebration. At the stroke of midnight on Nov. 9, a date that not only Germans would remember, thousands who had gathered on both sides of the Wall let out a roar and started going through it, as well as up and over. West Berliners pulled East Berliners to the top of the barrier along which in years past many an East German had been shot while trying to escape; at times the Wall almost disappeared beneath waves of humanity. They tooted trumpets and danced on the top. They brought out hammers and chisels and whacked away at the hated symbol of imprisonment, knocking loose chunks of concrete and waving them triumphantly before television cameras. They spilled out into the streets of West Berlin for a champagne-spraying, horn-honking bash that continued well past dawn, into the following day and then another dawn. As the daily BZ would headline: BERLIN IS BERLIN AGAIN...

The Wall, of course, was built in August 1961 for the very purpose of stanching an earlier exodus of historic dimensions, and for more than a generation it performed the task with brutal efficiency...

Time Magazine, November 2009: Hip Berlin: Europe's Capital of Cool

NYT, November 6, 2009: Brain Drain in Reverse Behind Fallen Berlin Wall

NYT, November 9, 2009: Life After the End of History

PS, November 9, 2009: A New World Architecture by George Soros: Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the world is facing another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism.

U.S. Unemployment Rate: 10.2% (to 17.5%)

NYT: The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday in its monthly economic appraisal...

Since the beginning of the recession in 2007, the number of unemployed Americans has increased by 8.2 million people, and the unemployment rate has risen by 5.3 percentage points...

The recession has left many Americans settling for part-time work because companies are reluctant to add full-time employees. The underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers, the jobless and those who have given up on searching, was 17.5 percent in October — the highest level since at least 1994...

For the 15.7 million Americans who were without work in October, Friday's data did little to change the realities of their daily lives...

(Rewind: May 1983: Time Magazine; September 1982: Time Magazine; February 1982: Time Magazine)

(Photo 1 from NYT: Yankee Fans Celebrate Their Newest Champions)
(Photo 2 from NYT: Army Doctor Held in Ft. Hood Rampage; morning print headline -- 12 Killed, 31 Wounded In Rampage At Army Post; Officer Is Suspect)

Fast-forward: October 2010: Stock Market Seems to Like 9.6%/17.1% U.S. Unemployment

Election Day 2009

Update: Wednesday morning headlines:

BP: "Bloomy Bucks Mean Bupkis in Brooklyn" ("Challenger Bill Thompson won a plurality of the ballots cast by borough residents, getting 49.8 percent of the vote to the 46 percent earned by Bloomberg... Preliminary returns show...Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights went 53-40 percent for the mayor.")
NYT: "Bloomberg Wins 3rd Term in Tight Race"
NYDN: "Hey Mike, you won again, so now repay the voter's trust. Your Last Shot to Deliver."
NYP: (?) "Spank Him, Yanks. Daddy to Whup Pedro Tonight."
AMNY: "Mike Ekes Out Win."
MNY: "Mike Gets Run For His Money"
WSJ: "Buffett Bets Big on Railroad"

Stashing Cash

The Wall Street Journal: Top Story: Jittery Companies Stash Cash: After Crisis, Big Businesses Hoard Most Bucks in 40 Years

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Fast-forward: December 2010: Clinging to Cash