Whoa, did that suck! I switched hosts to a new VPS service, which rocks, but unfortunately found myself bested by Apache2 and the site went down for a few days. Sorry for the interruption! A big thanks to Rottenchester of The Fighting 29th, who was able to straighten out the mess with my configuration and get my back online. Thanks!

And in items of interest this morning, whilst I work on updating the news section:

As a sign of the times, the NYT is reporting that office space in Manhattan is rapidly emptying out ahead of the looming recession. I hope they cleared out the upper floors first. Those are some nice streets to have to wipe the Investor Class off of.

And here in Rochester, the Irondequoit Town Board will be meeting on plans to make the Medley Center - known on this site as the Diddly Center - even less useful than it was as a mall. Don’t miss the comments section on this one.

I find it sort of ironic that they want a movie theatre in the Medley Center when they already have one down on Culver where you can catch a movie, eat some popcorn and watch teenagers knife-fight in the parking lot. We really need another one of those in town? Seriously?

Xerox has underperformed Wall Street’s expectations, citing slacking demand for their products among big businesses worried over recession.  I’ve put together some of the basic facts, gleaned from a number of news sources, in one convenient package.  Enjoy.

One thing I found interesting: Xerox doesn’t want to say yet how their plans will affect Rochester.  Fair enough, and probably expected, but they say they’re waiting to hear about voluntary exits - basically, retirees and people quiting of their own accord - before they make any decisions.  Given the fact that they’ve already gotten rid of 600 people thus far this year, wouldn’t they already know about retirements at this point?

Not the best defense, Xerox.  And while the D&C seems to want to shine up the story, stating that the company’s profits are up and they outperformed expectations, neither of those two things are true and the comment section is going nuts with the false pretense their reporting creates.

Generally where economic discussions are concerned, I tend to think that the last thing we need to better inform the public is more terms and phrases.  I said God Damn, but they just love the jargon, don’t they?

Still, with Senator Phill Gramm’s “Whiner” talk as context, it seems like perhaps there is a much wider chasm between the words we use to describe our economy and the reality.  Because the word “Recession” doesn’t quite cover what we’re seeing.

As Phil Gramm and George Will both correctly point out, we are not precisely in a recession: a recession is generally marked by economists as a period of two consecutive quarters where GNP falls.  We seem to be see-sawing our way through our current economic crisis, losing one quarter and gaining the next.  But whether or not that actual threshold has passed is immaterial to the pain felt by most average Americans as a result of our current economic situation.  See-sawing we may indeed be doing, but it’s been going on for the last eight years and the trend is generally downward.

One problem that might account for the disparity between economic indicators and public sentiment may be that since American companies produce oil all over the world, $145 a barrel pricing doubtless has some buoying effect on our GNP, obviously without the economic upside for the rest of us.  For the rest of us, that same boon to the oil industry is a hardship.  Another problem is that when the economy does well, we worker bees tend to expect pay raises and such.  But in the stagnant economy of the 21st century, many of us work in companies that have long-since frozen wages.

So, if we’re not in a recession by precise standards, what is it?  Clearly, Phil Gramm’s comments are not well-received, but perhaps more importantly, they depict a very real difference between how Wall Street tycoons and others see the economy as compared to those of us actually living in it.  On a purely political level, I think it’s fantastic that McCain’s camp had to dance around this issue, but it’s the truth of what he said that is most troublesome.

What that word aught to be, I don’t know.  Perhaps “Economic Orphanage” is more appropriate?

The D&C is reporting that the service industry sector of our economy is slumping bad for the first time in five years.  Here in Rochester, that industry makes up about 2/3 of our work force to the tune of some 350,000 workers.  On the least-negative side of this news, since the housing slump has affected Rochester very little, it stands to reason that local service jobs like restaurant and other consumer service jobs are likely safe.  But for those who work in tech support, outbound sales, and even web design (gulp), this is not welcome news.

Dean Baker, writing for TPM Media, gives us a glimpse of what a real recession might be. In the comments, someone also makes the additional point that this time around, it is the banks specifically that are taking the brunt of the damage. That means that the institutions that normally balance out recessions are in deep trouble, and so are we.

Sleep tight, kiddies:

What Will the Recession Feel Like? | TPMCafe

In the event that the recession proves to be severe and looks more like the 1980-82 downturn, then we will be looking at an increase in the unemployment rate of almost three percentage points. The rise in the unemployment rate for blacks and teens will be close to five percentage points, and for black teens the increase will be nine percentage points. We still will not have recovered to current unemployment rates by the time of the next presidential election in 2012.

Paul B. Farrell introduces us to what he believes will be the positives of what may well be an inevitable recession.  I’d say that, on balance, it’s an interesting set of ideas but probably reckless wishful thinking.  There’s no doubt but that economic growth is entirely tied up with the political fortunes of our leadership (a concept hinted at in the article, though not directly expressed).  I don’t doubt that all the cited benefits of recession would, in a perfect world, be excellent opportunities.  We should probably use the impending recession to get our house in order, but do we really think that’s what’s going to happen?

Hardly.  It’ll just be one more reason to “throw the bums out,” while we continue to pile up credit card debt like there’s nothing wrong with that.