"Last hired, first fired: This generations-old cliche rings bitterly true for millions of Latinos and blacks who are losing jobs at a faster rate than the general population during this punishing recession.

Much of the disparity is due to a concentration of Latinos and blacks in construction, blue-collar or service-industry jobs that have been decimated by the economic meltdown. And black unemployment has been about double the rate for whites since the government began tracking those categories in the early 1970s.

But this recession is cutting a swath through the professional classes as well, which can be devastating to people who recently arrived there.

Since the recession began in December 2007, Latino unemployment has risen 4.7 percentage points, to 10.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Black unemployment has risen 4.5 points, to 13.5 percent. White unemployment has risen 2.9 points, to 7.3 percent." Source: Black Voices

"New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo today charged money manager J. Ezra Merkin with civil fraud in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, alleging that Merkin funneled more than $2.4 billion in clients’ funds to Madoff while ignoring 'glaring red flags.'

Merkin, a well-known New York philanthropist and the former chairman of General Motors Corp.’s financing arm, GMAC Financial Services, 'profited enormously from Madoff’s scheme, reaping huge commissions while investors lost all their money,' Cuomo said in a statement.

Merkin earned $470 million in management and incentive fees over time by steering money to Madoff, Cuomo said." Source: LA Times

"The public outcry over corporate jets and other executive perquisites intensified last year, but that didn't ground top brass at Dana Holding Corp.

The Toledo, Ohio, auto supplier, which emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2008, spent $2.3 million last year on chartered planes to fly its chairman and chief executive, John M. Devine (photo above), and its vice chairman and former CEO, Gary L. Convis, to and from their California homes, according to its latest proxy statement.

Other jet-setting CEOs included James M. Bernhard Jr. of Shaw Group Inc. and Lewis B. Campbell of Textron Inc., who amassed $642,500 and $590,400, respectively, in personal air-travel expenses." Source: Wall Street Journal

"The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March as the economy lost 663,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. But the black unemployment rate remained relatively steady, dropping slightly from 13.4 percent to 13.3 percent.

More than 5 million jobs have now been lost since the recession began in December 2007, and almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the job losses took place in the last 5 months. The total number of unemployed persons increased to 13.2 million, the government said on Friday.

The stable numbers among African American may mark a temporary reprieve or could indicate that unemployment is already so high in the black community that the job crisis has already caused much of the harm before it reached the overall population.

The Labor Department estimates that the first quarter unemployment rate for African Americans was 13.1 percent, higher than for any other racial or ethnic group." Source: The Daily Voice

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. accounting rulemakers on Thursday agreed to make adjustments to a proposal to change mark-to-market accounting rules concerning when transactions would be considered distressed. [...]

The board, at a meeting in Norwalk, Connecticut, said it would remove a presumption in its original proposal that would have allowed all transactions in an inactive market to be considered distressed unless proven otherwise. It said that particular language could have had unintended consequences.

FASB also said the objective of mark-to-market, or fair value accounting, in inactive markets would be to determine what an asset could fetch in an 'orderly' transaction between market participants. It said an 'orderly' transaction would not include distressed transactions or fire-sales.

The board is continuing discussions on the rule and another rule on other-than-temporary impairment issues that affect when writedowns have to be taken on financial assets that have suffered a decline in value." Source: Yahoo! News

EMANUEL: Look, we're gonna need you to step down--immediately

WAGONER: Wha--

EMANUEL: I said, we're gonna need you to to step down.

WAGONER: But I thought--

EMANUEL: Here's the bottom line: You're !@%# FIRED! This is non-negotiable.

WAGONER: Uh, ok... Uh, very well, I'll, uh... I'll make the announcement ASAP... (voice trails off as the dial tone kicks in)

I write this letter to you in memory of the hundreds of thousands of workers over the past 25+ years who have been tossed into the trash heap by General Motors. Many saw their lives ruined for good. They turned to alcohol or drugs, their marriages fell apart, some took their own lives. Most moved on, moved out, moved over, moved away. They ended up working two jobs for half the pay they were getting at GM. And they cursed the CEO of GM for bringing ruin to their lives.

Not one of them ever thought that one day they would witness the CEO receive the same treatment. Of course Chairman Wagoner will not have to sign up for food stamps or be evicted from his home or tell his kids they'll be going to the community college, not the university. Instead, he will get a $23 million golden parachute. But the slip in his hands is still pink, just like the hundreds of thousands that others received -- except his was issued by us, via the Obama-man. Here's the door, buster. See ya. Don't wanna be ya. Source: Michael Moore's Blog on Huffington Post

Even as taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet in a crumbling, tumbling economy, your friendly neighborhood (and state and federal) government is having a hard time making do with the meager trillions you're throwing its way, so it's relying on an old maxim:

Billions of dollars in the hole, California's legislature is considering a blunt proposal from a San Francisco assemblyman: taxing legalized marijuana sales at $50 an ounce, a move its sponsor thinks could net the state about $1 billion a year. Oregon is considering a similar measure, taxing medical marijuana at nearly $100 an ounce. The taxes could really help excite the states' economies, even if everything else gets sluggish for a while. Source: Fox News

Elizabeth Warren, in charge of oversight of the financial industry bailout, told a congressional panel Tuesday that the Treasury Department has not been cooperating with her efforts to oversee the project.

'We do not seem to be a priority for the Treasury Department,' said Warren.

She added that the administration's failure to ask for more accountability has led to a situation that is difficult to oversee. 'This problem starts with Treasury,' she said." Source: Huffington Post

"While I certainly don't advocate violence against anyone, I will remind folks that when you lay down with dogs, you often wake up with fleas. If the AIG executives thought that their decision to accept huge bonuses in the wake of the bailout, they are now being forced to rethink this logic..."

Source: The Thomas Tribune on Newsvine.com

"Pay me $700,000 a year, or however much the AIG guy whining in today's New York Times made, and you can threaten me with death all goddamn day. Because do you have any idea how much money that is??? Hell, I'll let you throw rocks at me. I'll let you poison my soup. You can slash my tires and spray-paint my driveway. AND ONCE I GET ALL THAT MONEY, I'M TOTALLY PAYING OFF SOME STUDENT LOANS AND FIXING THE GARAGE ROOF AND BUYING SOME NEW PANTS. Because that's an insane amount of money."

Source: Huffington Post

New York Times:

FRESNO, Calif. -- As the operations manager of a outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center.

"They just popped up about 18 months ago," Mr. Stack said. "One day it was empty. The next day, there were people living there."

Source: New York Times