A lot more programs are proposed for cuts than the ones I wrote about here. Here are several that people spoke out for at yesterday's public hearing--the last public hearing the council will hold before approving the proposed King County budget.

The King County Agricultural Program. The county's agricultural program works to preserve farmland and protect farms from development pressure in rural King County. One of its best-known programs is Puget Sound Fresh, which supports local farmers, promotes community-supported agriculture, and supports farmers markets around the region. Wade Bennett, owner of Rockridge Orchards in Enumclaw, told the council that the agricultural program had helped transform local farms from "an endangered species.. to merely a threatened species," helping 4,000 King County farmers feed 100,000 people a year. The agricultural program, which costs $120,000 a year, could be eliminated.

The King County Crisis Clinic. The Crisis Clinic runs a suicide prevention program, helps people who are caregivers to the sick and disabled, directs people to emergency shelters, and helps people navigate the social justice system. Last year, Committee to End Homelessness Program Director Bill Block told the council, the clinic took 50 percent more calls seeking rental assistance and 21 percent more calls seeking help with heating and lighting bills. Services like the Crisis Clinic "keep our residents' lives intact," Block said.

New Futures. New Futures operates on-site in low-income apartment complexes in South King County, where the county's poverty and school failure rates are highest. They run after-school programs, mentor teens, provide community development services, and help kids and adults learn English. According to New Futures director Karma Kreizenbeck, who implored the council to preserve the program's county funding, 92 percent of the agency's clients are recent immigrants.

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Sims's proposed budget would completely eliminate funding for the NWIRP's domestic-violence investigation unit, which investigates immigrants' allegations of domestic violence; according to an NWIRP representative who spoke at this week's meeting, the group currently has 82 people on its waiting list.

Eastside Domestic Violence. This program, which serves north and east King County, provides crisis counseling, shelter, transitional housing, and support groups for victims of domestic violence, as well as community education and training. Several former domestic violence victims told the council that without ESDV, they would have been on the streets. "I felt trapped and didn’t know who to turn to or where to go since I had kept my situation a secret from my family and friends," said one young woman who had been a victim of domestic violence for five years. "Eastside Domestic Violence was a way out… Please do not take this way out away from women like me."

That's actually only the tiniest sampling of the worthy programs that are facing cuts. County residents can also say farewell to treatment, pre-release education and training for inmates to keep them from committing crimes again; the downtown emergency winter shelter; health care and assistance for poor women and children with HIV and AIDS; several county-run family planning clinics that provide birth control and routine PAP smears to poor women; rodent control; case management for people with tuberculosis; services for drug-addicted pregnant women and families; a program that monitors infectious diseases, like hanta virus and avian flu, spread by animals; and school-based dental care programs for children, among many other vital programs.) I've tried to come up with a bright side to all these cuts, and I can't. It's wholesale slaughter at King County. All I can say is, I'm glad I don't have their job.

Circuit City Stores Inc., the nation's second-biggest electronics retailer, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday (Nov. 10) but plans to stay open for business as the busy holiday shopping season approaches.

It filed under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which will allow it to hold off creditors and continue operations while it develops a reorganization plan.

The Richmond, Va.-based company has been struggling as nervous consumers spend less and credit has become tighter, and the retail industry overall is facing what's expected to be the weakest holiday season in decades.

Circuit City also said it would cut 700 more jobs, after announcing a week ago that it would close 20 percent of its stores and lay off thousands of workers.

Via Associated Press

If this should happen, it would be an atom bomb dropping on the American middle class. It might be hard to see from here (or maybe not), but GM and the auto industry are among the few things that have worked in the US private sector, from a social and economic point of view. You know the deal. Work hard, turn in your hours, and you'll be rewarded with the American dream: home, retirement, some vacations, and so on. Be part of the great, producing company, and all of this is yours.

On the other hand, the service sector that has come to dominate the US economy is most notable for producing shitty, disposable jobs that are considered a stepping stone to something better. So what future will we favor in these tough times--becoming underappreciated, union-less armies selling outsourced, imported goods? Or becoming a well paid worker that actually makes things?

And here's what might be most shocking--despite being saddled with the costs and responsibilities of being the largest private pension and health insurance provider in the world, has made clever and key investments that deserve fulfillment. Yes, I'm talking about an American car-maker; hear me out.

Nevermind the now-defunct EV-1--the first modern mass-produced electric car. GM's heavy-duty hybrid technology would be far more revolutionary than Toyota's. Likewise, the technology in a Chevy Volt does a far better job of playing to the strengths of electric and gas motors than any competing hybrid. For more technical details, you should hop over to DearScience.org for an explanation.

GM has great ideas, their manufacturing quality is on par with the Japanese manufacturers, they have beloved small cars they've started pumping.

Early on in this crisis, we decided that AIG--an insurance company that made horrifyingly bad decisions--was worthy of rescue. We're now up to $150 billion in a growing pit of despair attempting to save a company that did little to create or maintain a middle class. On the other hand, the same sum invested in American industry as loans would have a clear, immediate and profound effect on the economy--putting money into the pockets of line workers, new products on the global market that are competitive and even potentially make our society more energy efficient.

The alternative frightens me. If we allow GM and the auto industry to fail, it's unclear what, if anything, would replace the key role it played in our economy. I cannot fathom how to renew an industrial middle class without the auto companies--and the vast manufacturing networks supported by them.

The bailout plan, first proposed by Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs banker Henry Paulson, was intended to loosen up these markets, returning them closer to normal. Thus far, the bailout measures have added about a trillion dollars to the national debt and left the credit markets improved, but still non-functional. And, it appears as if most of those credit improvements were due to direct governmental intervention, rather than a true improvement in investor confidence.

The two models of the bailout can be exemplified by the bailouts of Bear Stearns and AIG.

For Bear Stearns, the government bought up their impossible-to-value toxic debt. No returns on that investment yet:

The Federal Reserve reduced the estimated value of the Bear Stearns Cos. assets it took on in June by $2.7 billion, or 9.2 percent, as the worsening credit crisis forced more markdowns on mortgage-backed debt.

And with AIG, the taxpayers took control of the company in return for desperately needed cash to keep the enterprise running. Initially, we provided $85 billion for a controlling share of AIG, followed by an additional $35 billion. How did that work out? The heads of AIG apparently lied about just how ugly the situation was and is. The $120 billion or so of taxpayer dollars we lent to them is already gone, with the company still teetering on failure. Take it away, NYT:

The American International Group is rapidly running through $123 billion in emergency lending provided by the Federal Reserve, raising questions about how a company claiming to be solvent in September could have developed such a big hole by October. Some analysts say at least part of the shortfall must have been there all along, hidden by irregular accounting.

“You don’t just suddenly lose $120 billion overnight,” said Donn Vickrey of Gradient Analytics, an independent securities research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The revelations that things were worse at AIG than expected led to the collapse of several insurance company stocks today, with many losing a quarter to a half of their total value.

How bad are the credit markets? Well, investors in the world's largest--and first--Money Market fund still cannot get their money back, over a month after it was frozen. The fund lost a tremendous amount of assets after Lehman Brothers collapsed. It gets worse. A second fund managed by the same company, that was supposed to only invest in government debt, also has been frozen--perhaps evidence the Reserve Fund company, in an attempt to hide their losses in their primary fund, took and lost money from investors in the government fund.

At least 400,000 people, and perhaps as many as a million, can’t get access to their savings, a problem that has quietly persisted in spite of widely publicized federal efforts to restore confidence in money-fund investments....

Initially, the company simply announced that it would delay redemptions from the Primary Fund for up to seven days, as allowed by law. Customers were somewhat reassured, but anyone trying to get additional information was met with busy phone lines and unanswered e-mail.

The news occasionally posted on the fund’s Web site got steadily worse. On Sept. 18, investors in a host of other Reserve money funds learned that their money would be tied up for as long as a week; that delay later became open-ended. On Sept. 19, the fund delayed redemptions from both the Primary Fund and the US Government Fund indefinitely.

Why would anyone entrust their money to a system where the lies and deceit are still being uncovered?

In the meantime, enter Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke--former economics professor and expert on the Great Depression.

His prescription: The government should spend money, even if it means running up even more debt. Spend on everything, including another round of checks. Enough with trying to save the financial system. If the credit markets are beyond short-term salvation, it's time to try to save the citizens of the country. You know, the Democratic plan, costing a (now paltry-seeming) $300 billion.

And the man he endorsed to spend the money, as his choice for the next president? Obama.

To summarize, in the Golob-scale-of-economist-panic, after a brief bit of optimism in the shadow of the trillion dollar Hail Mary pass to save the financial markets, and its subsequent failure to help enough, we're at six beakers by now:

You don't have to take my word for it. Let the San Francisco Fed president Janet Yellen's gloom be your confirmation.

And now some Muppets to make things feel better:

According to analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for individuals 25 to 61 years old, female-headed households have twice the likelihood – 13.5% - of seeing a 50% greater drop in their income than male-headed households’ probability – 6.6% - of such a drop. The probability of a major income drop for female-headed households has risen in the last two recessions.

Female-headed households are at a distinct disadvantage in recessions because they have fewer savings to draw upon. In an analysis by Harvard Professor Mariko Chang of the net worth of all unmarried women, he found that their median net worth was $12,900 – less than half the $26,850 for unmarried men. He found that the wage gap is the primary cause of this inequality of wealth – accounting for 39% of the disparity for never-married households and 18% of the disparity for divorced households.

More than half of all poor adult women - 54 percent - are single with no dependent children. Twenty-six percent of poor adult women are single women with dependent children

For more on the wage gap, see the Center for American Progress's October 2008 report, The Straight Facts on Women in Poverty.

That's just gross.

Cuba.

In the spirit of objectively tracking the downfall of the global economy, I've decided to begin a semi-regular post conglomerating data on the (non-)functioning of the financial system. If I'm going to panic, I want evidence backing it up.

Rather than focusing on the stock market (equity), like most daily coverage of this crisis, I'm going to focus on liquidity. The inability of companies, big and small, to borrow seems the most likely thing to impact people on a day-to-day basis. (For those of you seeking to retire shortly, well, this might not be the case. My apologies. You can read about the implosion of the stock market elsewhere.)

I've included the TED spread, US bond yields, Corporate bond yields, and a spread of the two I've crafted. If you know of an index that you think I should include here, please let me know. I fully admit I'm out of my depth here. Instruct me, and I'll modify the post. A ton of data is available. Help me coalesce it into something coherent.

I've also included a subjective "beaker scale of economist panic" based on my sense of relative state of fear on experts writing about the crisis. As I get a set of objective data together, I plan to make this a calculated value--an SI-unit of doom.

(It's all after the jump.)]]> Jonathan Golob http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/10/economic_apocalypse_data_for_10102008 http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/10/economic_apocalypse_data_for_10102008 Economy Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:18:46 -0800 During last night's debate, I was astonished by the stupidity of McCain's plan for dealing with the mortgage crisis.

Don't take my word for it. Here's University of California Berkeley professor J. Bradford DeLong's take:

* The Paulson Plan: Have the government buy up distressed securities at market value, thus reducing the supply of high-yield debt securities that the private sector must hold. When you reduce the supply of anything you raise its price. Hence the Paulson plan's $700 billion purchases will push the prices of risky debt securities up, and so companies will then be able to sell their bonds again and so hire more workers, and depression will be averted.

* The Elmendorf Plan: Have the government directly invest in and take an equity stake in troubled banks, thus reassuring their depositors and creditors that they are sound. The banks will then be able to profit by buying up distressed securities--hence raising their prices--and by directly lending to companies that will then be able to hire more workers, and depression will be averted.

....

The McCain plan is:

* Take $300 billion.
* Pay double current market value to banks that have troubled mortgages on their books, thus:
o Give a present of $100 billion to the bankers who made the loans.
o Acquire and regularize the mortgages of only two-thirds as many homeowners as could have been accomplished if the $300 billion were invested wisely.

There's a big difference here: Democrats want to prevent depression and support the financial markets by investing taxpayer money in banks with troubled assets. Republicans want to give taxpayers money away to the shareholders and managers of banks with troubled assets.

I would say that this is unbelievable, but I do believe it.

Cronyism, indeed.

ADORABLE. You never sent me a card, WaMu. NOW it's emotional! Thank YOU, Christine!

The site says they were previously priced at $389,950. What will they go for now?