Smith & President

Corzine: "I Simply Do Not Know..."

2011-12-08T19:42:00.005-05:00

John Corzine, Thursday: "I simply do not know where the money is."

Jamie Dimon, Wednesday: "I just don't get it."

Black Friday 2011 (Eye On 2031)

2011-11-25T10:26:00.010-05:00

"Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer; Greg David, director of the business reporting from at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and a contributor to Crain's New York Business; Kathryn Wylde, New York Federal Reserve deputy chairwoman and head of the Partnership for New York City; and Jesse LaGreca of #occupywallstreet and the Daily Kos, participate in a dialogue about the issues at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests..."

-- http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2011/nov/25/ows-dialog/

Fast-forward to 12:07..."First of all, how do we scientists know what's going to happen 10, 15, 20 years into the future? How can we be so confident?..."

Month 2

2011-11-17T07:29:00.010-05:00

http://occupywallst.org/action/november-17th/

Google News Search: occupy wall street month

Rewind/Zoom Out: 9 Months:
Egypt: 3 Weeks/3 Decades Later

Rewind/Zoom Out: 2 Years to Fall 2009:
1. 10 Years After the Berlin Wall Fell, Another Wall Fell
2. Wall Street & Washington vs. the Country
3. Kaptur: "Wall Street and Washington Is a Circuit"

The Brink 4: Crisis & Danger

2011-11-09T18:35:00.005-05:00

Saturday morning:

Tuesday morning:

Month 1

2011-10-17T14:29:00.002-04:00

Google News Search: occupy wall street month

Day 19

2011-10-05T23:43:00.001-04:00

Global Sell-Off

2011-08-05T10:41:00.004-04:00

From Wednesday to Thursday morning's newsstand:

From Thursday to Friday morning's newsstand:

The Brink 3: Fears

2011-08-03T18:32:00.005-04:00

Rewind: May 2010: Fears

The Brink 2

2011-06-30T11:45:00.007-04:00

Rewind: May 2010: Debt

Bedrock Rocked

2011-06-01T09:50:00.022-04:00

May 31, 2011:

NYT: Disenchantment with real estate is bound to swell further on Tuesday when the most widely watched housing index is all but guaranteed to show that prices of existing homes sank in March below the lows reached two years ago — until now the bottom of the housing crash. In February, the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of 20 large cities slumped for the seventh month in a row.

Housing is locked in a downward spiral, industry analysts say, not only because so many people are blocked from the market — being unemployed, in foreclosure or trapped in homes that are worth less than the mortgage — but because even those who are solvent are opting out.

“The emotional scars left by the collapse are changing the American psyche,” said Pete Flint, chief executive of the housing Web site Trulia. “There was a time when owning a home was a symbol you had made it. Now it’s O.K. not to own.”

Trulia, a real estate search engine for buyers and renters that is based here, is a hive of renters, including Mr. Flint. “I’m in no rush at all to buy,” he said. He expects homeownership to decline further to about 63 percent, a level the country first achieved in the mid-1960s.

Tim Hebb, a Los Angeles systems engineer, expertly called the real estate bubble. He sold his bungalow in August 2006, then leased it back for a year. Since then, the 61-year-old single father has rented a succession of apartments.

“I have flirted with buying again many times over the past few years,” said Mr. Hebb. “Let’s face it, people are not rational creatures.”

But he always resists, figuring housing is still overpriced and even when it stops declining it will stumble along the bottom for years and years.

June 1, 2011:

WSJ: "If you had to identify one thing in particular that's been responsible for the subpar nature of this cycle, it would be housing," said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist for MFR Inc. "The bad news is I don't expect it to turn around any time soon."

Economists say it could take years for the housing market to return to health and it will take faster growth, strong job gains and improvements in consumer confidence to make it happen...

Two years ago, home prices stopped falling as low prices, along with home-buyer tax credits, spurred a surge in sales. But demand collapsed last summer after those credits expired and left markets without enough buyers to absorb a steady flow of foreclosed properties.

Home prices have tumbled for eight straight months, and in March they slid to their lowest level since the start of the 2006-2009 downturn, according the S&P/Case-Shiller monthly 20-City Composite Index.

Indeed, 12 of the 20 metropolitan areas tracked in the index posted new lows in March. Only the Washington, D.C., and Seattle markets saw month-to-month growth of 1.1% and 0.1%, respectively.

June 2, 2011:

June 4, 2011:

June 7, 2011:

June 10, 2011:

June 11, 2011:

June 16, 2011:

May 2011: Debt Grab

April 2011: Warned

December 2010: Clinging to Cash

May 2010: Fears, Confidence, Debt

November 2009: Stashing Cash

Debt Grab

2011-05-18T15:17:00.002-04:00

May 18, 2011: WSJ:

Companies Rush to Borrow

Firms Fill Up on Debt Before Fed Closes Door on Easy Credit

In what may be a healthy sign for the U.S. economy, several companies selling debt this week are using the money for expansion, rather than sitting on the cash or refinancing existing debt. That suggests capital expenditures may increase, potentially boosting employment. Some companies are funding acquisitions and share buybacks.

May 16, 2011: WSJ:

Another Season of Hoarders

Recession-scarred companies are holding back from spending—even if they have the cash

"...it's possible that this recession jolted business owners so badly that they've broken the usual cycle. "Because of the depth and severity of this recession, we're rebounding slower," says Ms. Coyne. "That ties to cash hoarding. People are trying to fund their own expansions, be their own bank—that's a change in mindset."

Gotta Fight

2011-05-10T13:50:00.003-04:00

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/2011/may/10/beastie-boys-return-form

No Spring?

2011-04-29T20:48:00.003-04:00

Warned

2011-04-19T11:04:00.018-04:00

Monday morning TV:

Tuesday morning 'papers:

Rewind: May 2010: Debt

Rewind: June 2010: Broken

Fast-forward: Saturday morning, August 6, 2011:

Smith Street: Where It's At

2011-03-28T10:03:00.005-04:00

Egypt: 3 Weeks/3 Decades Later

2011-02-11T08:25:00.011-05:00

Fast-forward one day:

Meanwhile, In Egypt

2011-01-30T21:59:00.007-05:00

The Economist: ...Egypt's print media is playing an important role in providing information and comment on the demonstrations taking place across the country.

6 Degrees This Morning

2011-01-24T21:28:00.011-05:00

Football Playoffs: NY Jets @ NE Pats

2011-01-16T11:14:00.005-05:00

Clinging to Cash

2010-12-20T16:09:00.003-05:00

The Wall Street Journal: Top Story: Companies Cling to Cash

Rewind: November 2009: Stashing Cash

Stock Market Seems to Like 9.6%/17.1%+ U.S. Unemployment

2010-10-11T09:33:00.015-04:00

Rewind: November 6, 2009: U.S. Unemployment Rate 10.2% (to 17.5%)

http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?searchinput=unemployment

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/unemployment/index.html

http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=unemployment&mod=DNH_S

Meanwhile, Germany (1990-2010)

2010-10-04T15:07:00.004-04:00

Rewind: It Was 20 Year Ago Today...

Fast-Forward: January 2012: "Germany's unemployment rate fell to a record low in January, data showed...its lowest point since figures for a reunified Germany were first published more than two decades ago."

NYC Mayor Freezes Hiring

2010-09-21T14:37:00.001-04:00

B: “Although the city’s unemployment rate has declined seven months in a row, and job growth in the city has outpaced growth nationally and statewide, we are not immune from the impacts of the recession,” Bloomberg said in his letter. Tax revenue for the current fiscal year remains more than $4 billion below the peak levels reached before the recession began, Bloomberg said.

“Since almost 60 percent of city spending goes towards labor costs, including pension and health care contributions, the city must immediately take steps to rein in spending,” he said. Positions immediately affecting public health and safety, and those that generate revenue, are unaffected by the freeze.

NYC "Official" July 2010 Unemployment Rate: 9.4%

2010-08-20T13:20:00.004-04:00

NYT: New York City’s unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent in July...

The city’s unemployment rate, which was 9.5 percent in June, has now declined for seven straight months since peaking at 10.5 percent at the end of 2009. It was slightly lower than the national unemployment rate — 9.5 percent in July — as it was in April and May.

Rewind: August 2009: New York City’s unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent last month, surpassing the national unemployment rate...

Griddle 2010

2010-07-13T13:14:00.005-04:00

TechCrunch: Today at a special ‘Ecomagination’ event in San Francisco, General Electric is announcing the launch of the $200 million GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid, an investment that’s meant to help spur advances in green grid technologies. The fund is launching in partnership with VC funds Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and RockPort Capital. Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson is also involved.

GE says that it is looking for proposals in three categories: Renewables, Grid, and Eco Homes & Eco Buildings. Applicants can submit ideas on ecomagination.com over a ten week period. Entrants will be eligable for both “a potential future commercial relationship” with GE and one of five $100,000 awards that are meant to highlight submissions demonstrating “outstanding entrepreneurship and innovation”.

http://challenge.ecomagination.com
http://www.emerald-ventures.com
http://www.foundationcapital.com
http://www.kpcb.com
http://www.rockportcap.com

Rewind: 2009: Griddle

Writer's Block

2010-07-13T10:28:00.002-04:00

Spain

2010-07-12T09:31:00.004-04:00

Wednesday, July 7: 99 Degrees

2010-07-07T13:58:00.004-04:00

Tuesday, July 6: 101 Degrees

2010-07-06T14:54:00.004-04:00

Monday, July 5: 98 Degrees

2010-07-05T15:17:00.008-04:00

NYP Front Page
Down South
Abroad

Rewind: 2009, 2008

Broken

2010-06-29T18:52:00.010-04:00

Von Drehle@Time: From Hartford to Honolulu, once sturdy state governments are approaching the brink of fiscal calamity, as the crash of 2008 and its persistent aftermath have led to the reckoning of 2010. Squeezed by the end of federal stimulus money on one hand and desperate local governments on the other, states are facing the third straight year of staggering budget deficits, and the necessary cuts will cost jobs, limit services and touch the lives of millions of Americans...

And don't count on the shaky economic recovery for relief. After plunging in 2009, tax receipts are stabilizing in many places — but the next big shoe is fixing to drop. Having poured billions of dollars into state coffers through the stimulus act of 2009, the federal government is poised to close the tap. President Obama made an unusual Saturday night request to Congress last week for $50 billion in emergency aid to the states to stave off layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police. But it's an election year, and there is scant appetite among vulnerable Democrats in Washington for more zeros at the end of the federal deficit. (Only the federal government is allowed to run deficits; states and cities must balance their budgets or face default.) Already, 11 states are projecting major budget gaps — greater than 10% of general-fund spending — well into 2013. Such persistent budget woes are unprecedented in the era of modern American government. You'd have to go back to the 1930s to find a parallel...

The great reckoning of 2010 took us years to create and will be years in the fixing. It's not as if the economic crisis isn't plenty painful already. In government, as in life, there are cuts that injure and cuts that heal. As they continue to slog through the wreckage of the Great Recession, state and local leaders have a challenge to be surgeons rather than hacks and make this era of crisis into a season of fresh starts.

Ross via Bolton@Bloomberg/Twitter: Looming municipal debt crisis.

Mullen & Carter via NPR: During a recent Washington speech, Mullen highlighted one troubling number: Within two years, just the annual interest on the debt will be close to $600 billion.

"And that's, notionally, about the size of the Defense Department budget. It's not sustainable," he said.

But, if overspending now endangers U.S. security, is it in part because the country is spending too much on security? At $700 billion a year, defense is the biggest part of the federal budget. The United States is now spending as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.

[The U.S. consumes 25% of the world's energy with a share of global GDP at 22% and a share of the world population at 5%.]

If the deficit is to be reduced, the Pentagon is certain to take a hit, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates is warning the department to get ready.

"The secretary is saying we need to deliver the war-fighting capability required within the resources the country can afford to provide, and that's going to require us to change the way we do business here," says Ashton Carter, the Defense Department's undersecretary for acquisitions.

Fast-forward: January 2011:

Insurance

2010-06-23T09:49:00.002-04:00

Beer, Eats, Times, Sale

2010-06-19T20:41:00.003-04:00

Rewind

2010-06-15T19:51:00.001-04:00

PBS: Back in 2006, economist Nouriel Roubini and scholar Nassim Taleb shared some words of warning about the state of the financial and housing markets.

On Tuesday night's NewsHour, we speak with both of them again...

Closed

2010-06-14T12:44:00.011-04:00

AMNY: It’s a game of chicken set to end at midnight Monday with angry New Yorkers caught in the middle.

The state government could literally shut down at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday if a band of lawmakers refuse to pass the governor’s week-long emergency spending bill that calls for year-long cuts to human services and other programs. For New Yorkers, that could mean everything from a freeze in unemployment checks to a halt in the Mega Millions lottery...

Without a state budget agreement since April, Gov. David Paterson has been taking a piecemeal approach...

“I think frankly the pressure is forcing the legislature to do the responsible thing,” gubernatorial front-runner candidate, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, said at the Puerto Rican Parade Sunday...

The legislators “risk subjecting the public to unimaginable pain that’s unnecessary,” Paterson said yesterday...

The feds and other state governments have shut down during budget impasses, but not New York. The city has plans in place if the worst case scenario should happen, a mayoral spokesman said, though he did not detail what those were.

BBW: “We are not going to shut down government and risk the safety and livelihood of millions of New Yorkers,” said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, who are led by John Sampson of Brooklyn, in an e-mailed comment yesterday. “As we continue to make progress on a final budget, we expect to pass the emergency extender and meet taxpayers’ needs.”

Paterson told a gathering of reporters last night in Albany that legislators’ comments that the spending bill will pass were “encouraging,” though he declined to predict the outcome of today’s vote. “One never really knows what’s going to happen in the Senate,” he said.

NY1: State Senate Democrats are assuring New Yorkers that there will not be a government shutdown today, as Albany lawmakers are set to vote on Governor David Paterson's latest emergency budget extender bill.

Democrats have not said exactly how they will gather the 32 votes needed to pass it.

Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada had threatened to vote against the bill if the governor continued to include permanent spending cuts in the weekly bills, but Espada said yesterday that progress was made over the weekend and he now expects the bill to pass.

The bill to keep the state running also includes some $327 million in cuts to mental health and social services, to help bridge the state's $9.2 billion budget gap.

Bronx Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. has said he will vote against any more cuts.

Republican Schenectady Senator Hugh Farley said Paterson's bill is "horrible," but that he would vote for it to prevent a shutdown.

Meanwhile: AP via BBW: NY agencies hosting high-speed rail conference

Rewind: December 9, 2009: "New York is now at the breaking point. We are about to cross the financial rubicon into fiscal disaster."

Repave

2010-06-09T10:56:00.005-04:00

Claims

2010-06-07T19:42:00.003-04:00

Challenges and Opportunities

2010-05-29T12:25:00.005-04:00

BookCourt

2010-05-27T11:05:00.008-04:00

BookCourt events

Today's New York Times front page (above the fold):
NYT: BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Well Before Blast
NYT: California Puts Vote Overhaul on the Ballot
NYT: Trampled in a Land Rush, Chinese Resist
NYT: In E. Coli Fight, Some Strains Are Largely Ignored

Fears

2010-05-26T09:51:00.006-04:00

Rewind: May 21, 2010: Confidence
Rewind: May 5, 2010: Debt

Craft Beer

2010-05-21T15:44:00.003-04:00

Fox NY: American Craft Beer Week runs from May 17-23... The industry's light-hearted "declaration of independence" extols craft brewing as "living liquid history" and a "libation of substance and soul."... More than 1,500 breweries are responsible for the beer brands made in the United States with more than 90 percent of these fitting the small and independent craft brewer definition. While independent brewers represent about 6 percent of beer sales, they provide about 100,000 jobs within the industry.

http://www.americancraftbeerweek.org/apps/events/events.html

Confidence

2010-05-21T10:35:00.004-04:00

Rewind: May 5, 2010: Debt

Bergen, Between Smith and Boerum

2010-05-19T16:54:00.005-04:00

TheInvisibleDog.org

Fast-forward: May 24, 2010: Brooklyn Maize Field (corner of Bergen and Smith): Installing the Stones on Bergen Street; Related: http://www.brooklynmaize.org/boreum.html

Between Sackett and Degraw

2010-05-05T18:53:00.005-04:00

Debt

2010-05-05T14:15:00.014-04:00

-> ft.com/greece
-> guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/05/uk-budget-deficit-worse-than-greece
-> economist.com/world/europe

Fast-forward: May 21, 2010: Confidence

Fast-forward: June 2011: The Brink 2

Food

2010-05-04T13:06:00.002-04:00

BP: Inspired by the upcoming “Bklyn Made” event at Borough Hall on May 14, which will spotlight more than a dozen of the borough’s food and beverage brands, we decided to check in with some of our oldest, thriving businesses and those with only a few years under their belts...

BCC: Brooklyn Goes Global is kicking off World Trade Week 2010 at our inaugural BKLYN MADE event showcasing some of the borough's finest food and beverage manufacturers. The public is welcome to join our invited guests, including distributors, wholesalers and buyers, as they meet the artisans and entrepreneurs of Brooklyn's food manufacturing industry while sampling their locally made specialties. Get the inside scoop on how these Brooklyn companies got their start and how these fine foods are produced...

Morning Bell

2010-04-23T17:37:00.013-04:00

Lewis via BBW: If you happen to be sitting on the Goldman Sachs bond-trading floor, life must feel horribly unfair. You did nothing worse than live by the ethical assumptions of your market—any money-making event short of obviously illegal is admirable—and now your own grandfather thinks you're some kind of monster... You're probably wondering: What next? What will the angry rabble—all those ordinary people who can never really understand your business—now demand that you explain to them, so they can disapprove of you all over again?

Here, for a start, is what the world beyond Wall Street is entitled to:

Full knowledge of the inner workings of your proprietary trading desk. In particular, the moment-to-moment dealings of your correlations traders from late 2004, when they first exploited AIG's idiotic willingness to sell cheap insurance on pools of subprime mortgage loans, until the end of 2007, when they would have taken most of their profits from the total collapse of the subprime bond markets...

Morgenson and Story via NYT: One of the mysteries of the financial crisis is how mortgage investments that turned out to be so bad earned credit ratings that made them look so good.

One answer is that Wall Street was given access to the formulas behind those magic ratings — and hired away some of the very people who had devised them.

In essence, banks started with the answers and worked backward, reverse-engineering top-flight ratings for investments that were, in some cases, riskier than ratings suggested, according to former agency employees...

Morgenson via NYT: Unfortunately, the leading proposals would do little to cure the epidemic unleashed on American taxpayers by the lords of finance and their bailout partners. The central problem is that neither the Senate nor House bills would chop down big banks to a more manageable and less threatening size. The bills also don’t eliminate the prospect of future bailouts of interconnected and powerful companies.

Too big to fail is alive and well, alas. Indeed, several aspects of the legislative proposals sanction and codify the special status conferred on institutions that are seen as systemically important. Instead of reducing the number of behemoth firms assigned this special status, the bills would encourage smaller companies to grow large and dangerous so that they, too, could have a seat at the bailout buffet...

Warren via WNYC (May 11, 2010): The rules are still the same at every point along the line... This is the central question for America... Can you stop the collateral consequences?... So no more Jamie Dimons and Lloyd Blankfeins having survived near death...

Roubini via WNYC (May 12, 2010): In 2006...we knew that we were at the tipping point... Everyone was living in a bubble. And once you live in a bubble, you lose all sense of reality.

Gone

2010-04-13T20:41:00.012-04:00

Rewind to Wednesday, March 31, 2010: Into the Great Wide Open

Duff

2010-04-08T10:24:00.003-04:00

Proper Attire Required... Wednesday High: 92 Degrees

2010-04-07T10:36:00.003-04:00

Open... Monday High: 72 Degrees

2010-04-05T19:54:00.005-04:00

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

Open at Some Point Tonight

2010-04-02T23:16:00.002-04:00

Into the Great Wide Open

2010-03-31T10:53:00.006-04:00

View Larger Map

Monday Rain

2010-03-29T13:32:00.005-04:00

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-03-29/moscow-metro-blast-casualties.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8592190.stm

How Do You Train a Dragon?

2010-03-26T19:36:00.003-04:00

MTA Cost Cuts: $93M Down, $307M To Go

2010-03-25T16:49:00.005-04:00

NYT: The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted 11 to 2 on Wednesday afternoon to implement a package of severe cuts to transit service, including the elimination of two subway lines and dozens of bus routes.

The service reductions, to be phased in starting in June, will save $93 million a year, part of an effort by the strapped authority to dig itself out of a $400 million budget shortfall.

Plus, NYT: The city’s official unemployment rate was 10.2 percent last month, down from 10.4 percent in January, the state Labor Department reported on Thursday. That was still significantly higher than the national unemployment rate, which was 9.7 percent in February.

The number of private-sector jobs in the city rose by 8,100 last month...

Report Roundup

2010-03-22T14:46:00.002-04:00

BP: ...the city unveiled plans for a bike-friendly facelift for Smith Street, turning the much-used approach to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges much less harrowing.

The improvements will work as a complement to the bike lane on the parallel, one-way southbound Hoyt Street.

“The bike lanes on Smith and Hoyt streets will work as a pair,” said Preston Johnson, an official with the Department of Transportation. “They’ll enhance access to the bridges and also to destinations on Smith Street.”

BP: Marc Elliot just took over the kitchen of the Irish pub Ceol on Smith — and created a menu so exquisite that his customers have no reason to move on for dinner after a few drinks.

“All we used to have was shepherd’s pie and bangers — but we had about three customers coming in for those,” Elliot said. “So I took note of that and all the items on other Smith Street menus, and put none of them on mine. Everyone has fried f—king calamari. I don’t.”

BP: An effort to preserve the history of Carroll Gardens is being criticized for actually hastening the neighborhood’s gentrification, said opponents of a controversial city initiative to widen the area’s historic district.

“They just want to re-gentrify and force out whatever elements from the past are left,” said lifelong area resident and businessman John Esposito, who helped form Citizens Against Landmarks to thwart the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s nascent effort to extend historic protections to a larger segment of the brownstone neighborhood.

BP: On Monday, Brooklyn finally gets a chance to park it on the stoop.

...the first phase of Brooklyn Bridge Park — featuring a vast green lawn and a granite front-stoop sitting area located on Pier 1 — will open to the public.

High: 68 Degrees

2010-03-18T17:10:00.006-04:00

Fast forward to Saturday, March 22, 2010:

Rewind to Thursday, November 24, 2009: 178 Smith Street: Burned

Rainy Days

2010-03-12T19:19:00.009-05:00

MW: Lehman autopsy shows evidence of problems: Examiner says legal claims possible against CEO Fuld, J.P. Morgan, Citi, others

Nasdaq: Mar. 10, '00-Mar. 10, '10

2010-03-10T12:30:00.003-05:00

Reuters via Yahoo: A decade later, lessons in the Nasdaq collapse

WSJ: When Bubble Burst: Companies Won, Investors Lost

MW: Commentary: Some are drawing wrong lessons from this week's anniversaries

MW: Internet stocks still well below their bubble-era highs

Mar. 9, '09-Mar. 9, '10: Now What?

2010-03-09T15:40:00.010-05:00

AP via Yahoo: Stocks have lost some of the momentum that propelled the Dow Jones industrial average up 61.4 percent from its close of 6,547 on March 9, 2009... investors are waiting for signs that the economy is ready to put up some solid, sustainable growth numbers.

The most likely trigger: job growth. Investors need to see a Labor Department report that says employers are creating more jobs than they're cutting.

NPR: Walker, the CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, is the author of Comeback America, a book detailing his belief that if significant fiscal reforms aren't immediately enacted in the United States, interest rates on the national debt will rise, and federal taxes could easily double from current levels by 2030...

"Structural deficits represent a fundamental imbalance between projected revenues and projected expenditures even when the economy is growing, even when the wars are over, even when unemployment is down. And in that circumstance, we face — because of known demographic trends — the retirement of the baby-boom generation primarily and rising health care cost — large, known and growing structural deficits that could swamp our ship of state."

Walker says that unless spending is controlled, the country will enter an "economic abyss."

I.O.U.S.A.: I.O.U.S.A.: Byte-Sized - The 30 Minute Version

NPR: Cost Of Medical School Rises

NPR: States Weigh Four-Day School Week To Cut Costs

WNYC: Harry Markopolos talks about his years spent investigating Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme:

April Is Just Around the Corner

2010-03-09T11:46:00.005-05:00

High: 61 Degrees

High: 60 Degrees

2010-03-08T15:05:00.004-05:00

Gowanus Canal Superfunded

2010-03-05T09:35:00.003-05:00

BP: EPA says yes to Superfund
BP: The Gowanus: A really messy 400 years!
BP: The Gowanus stinks — for Toll Brothers

Plus...

BP: No bull! Ridge woman is drinking milk straight from the cow!
BP: Fork this! Foodies are now leading the gentrification of Brooklyn

NY Gov. Gone Wild

2010-03-04T15:32:00.000-05:00

Another Snow Day

2010-02-26T11:03:00.005-05:00

More Snow

2010-02-25T13:59:00.002-05:00

Rain

2010-02-23T11:12:00.013-05:00

AMNY: ...MTA to layoff more than a 1,000 workers, an unprecedented move for the agency, according to transit sources.

Officials are expected to announce Tuesday that they plan to lay off 500 subway station agents who provide customer information and keep watch on the system. The MTA was letting the workers go through attrition, but now plans to boot them by the summer, sources said...

Additionally, the MTA plans to lay off up to 18 percent of administrators by the summer, with possible cuts of about 700 workers, sources said. Down the road, officials also might remove some newly hired bus drivers.

The MTA declined comment. A union spokesman said they had not heard anything definitive about layoffs...

NY State: The New York State Office of the State Comptroller released its annual Wall Street bonus report...

Rewind: Feb. 19, 2010: John Lanchester offers his particular take on the global economic crisis in his new book, I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay...

-- "The median income in the U.S. hasn't gone up since the '70s -- since 1975... The ordinary people aren't getting any better off. And I think the end of the Cold War is one of the reasons for that."

[Rewind: Dec. 3, 2009: Elizabeth Warren via HuffPo: Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street.]

[Rewind: Sep. 11, 2009: USA Today: Americans' household income last year took the sharpest drop since the government began keeping records in 1947, the Census Bureau reported... Median household income sank 3.6%... Income tumbled to its lowest dollar level since 1997 — a decade's worth of gains wiped out in one year...]

Rewind: Feb. 19, 2010: NYC: New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn delivered her State of the City address...

Rewind: ...2009/12/nyc-council-speaker-pitches-foodworks.html

What's Up, Pooch?

2010-02-19T12:23:00.004-05:00

AMNY: Station fixes often flubbed, report says / Report: Some station rehabs overbudget, lagging behind

Your City. Your Drugstore. Walgreens Wants It For $1.1B!

2010-02-17T13:42:00.007-05:00

http://news.walgreens.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=5278

Google News: walgreens + duane reade

Here We Snow Again

2010-02-16T16:34:00.001-05:00

Blizzard

2010-02-10T14:43:00.003-05:00

Tishman Era at S-Town & PC-Village Is Over

2010-01-25T11:33:00.005-05:00

WSJ: Tishman Venture Gives Up Stuyvesant Project
NYT: Huge N.Y. Housing Complex Is Returned to Creditors
CNY: Tishman, BlackRock hand over Stuy Town keys

Flash Flood Watch and Wind Gusting to 42 MPH

2010-01-25T11:26:00.004-05:00

Football Champ. Game Day: Indi. Colts Beat NY Jets 30-17, NO Saints Beat Minn. Vikings 31-28

2010-01-24T18:10:00.009-05:00

For Indi. Colts and NO Saints, next stop: the Super Bowl (February 7, 2010)

For NY Jets, fast-forward: Sunday, January 16, 2011

Film Shoot on Smith Street: "Arnold's vs. Parson's"

2010-01-24T18:01:00.006-05:00

Free Fallin'

2010-01-19T12:04:00.010-05:00

Joseph Stiglitz on WNYC (audio): "There was a party going on and the regulators did not want to be a party pooper."

Andrew Ross Sorkin on WNYC (audio): "Most of these people, frankly, are to blame... Really, the blame is so far across the board... You'd have to build a new jail... You really would. It's that difficult."

Rewind: Somehow, Kaptur: "Wall Street and Washington Is a Circuit"

Fast forward: Feb. 3, 2010: WNYC: Eliot Spitzer discusses the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the current state of Wall Street, and what regulations might prevent banks from taking the kind of dangerous risks that caused the crisis.

Football Playoffs: NY Jets Beat SD Chargers 17-14

2010-01-18T11:06:00.004-05:00

Final team to topple in order to reach the Super Bowl: Indianapolis Colts (Sunday, January 24, 2009)

Fast-forward: Football Champ. Game Day: Indi. Colts Beat NY Jets 30-17...