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The Decline: The Geography of a Recession by LaToya Egwuekwe (OFFICIAL)

UNEMPLOYMENT
DECEMBER 2009

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. – As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery."

The key economics positions in the Obama presidency are in the hands of the very people that caused the crisis in the first place. The offered solutions border on insanity by amplifying Wall Street political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer’s role as a welfare provider for the financial services industry. Unemployment has jumped up 12 % -in actuality it is 17 %, because it leaves out 1. groups of people those who are underemployed 2. those who are working part time but would like full time and 3.those who have given up and not looking for work anymore. Inflation, increased government spending, and assaults on private savings combined with calls for profligacy is the Recovery plan for the 21 sty Century.

Congress must soon raise the debt ceiling, now at $12.1 trillion, so the Treasury can continue to borrow, and Democratic leaders are eyeing a new figure close to $14 trillion, pushing the issue past next November's election, thus creating more inflation and loss of the dollar value.

Emergency lending to troubled firms perpetuates the misallocation of resources and expands favoritism to firma enfaced in unsustainable activities at the expense of sound firms and the destruction of small business.

We have transferred most of our jobs abroad and placed our richness in the hands of other countries in the hope that they will get bigger stronger happier and will still keep our resources for us to profit.

More than half of the nation’s unemployed workers have borrowed money from friends or relatives since losing their jobs. An equal number have cut back on doctor visits or medical treatments because they are out of work.
Almost half have suffered from depression or anxiety. About 4 in 10 parents have noticed behavioral changes in their children that they attribute to their difficulties in finding work.

Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll of unemployed adults, causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities.

With unemployment driving foreclosures nationwide, a quarter of those polled said they had either lost their home or been threatened with foreclosure or eviction for not paying their mortgage or rent.

Almost half said unemployment had led to more conflicts or arguments with family members and friends; 55 percent have suffered from insomnia.

A quarter of those who experienced anxiety or depression said they had gone to see a mental health professional. Women were significantly more likely than men to acknowledge emotional issue

Nearly half of the adults surveyed admitted to feeling embarrassed or ashamed most of the time or sometimes as a result of being out of work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the traditional image of men as breadwinners, men were significantly more likely than women to report feeling ashamed most of the time.

Nearly half of respondents said they did not have health insurance, with the vast majority citing job loss as a reason, a notable finding given the tug of war in Congress over a health care overhaul. The poll offered a glimpse of the potential ripple effect of having no coverage. More than half characterized the cost of basic medical care as a hardship.

Even those who have stayed employed have not escaped the recession’s bite. According to a New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll conducted at the same time as the poll of unemployed adults, about 3 in 10 people said that in the past year, as a result of bad economic conditions, their pay had been cut.

Of the 787 billion dollars authorized by Congress, about 173 billion (22%) has been paid out. The bulk of that money went to entitlement programs such as Medicaid and unemployment.


The latest numbers show the federal government has spent $120 billion, or a little more than 20 percent of the $580 billion in actual spending included in the act. When you add the $63 billion in tax cuts already issued, the government has spent $183 billion since the Recovery Act was passed in February—just shy of a quarter of the total funds appropriated by Congress.

It takes a $200 billion investment to decrease unemployment 1%, it takes $300 billion in tax cuts to decrease unemployment 1%.

On the news we are only given statistics and data in order to distance ourselves from the truth. When the weight of reality is a somber picture painted in flesh and blood, in real people and real suffering. Across the country, store fronts sit vacant, houses abandoned, neighborhoods decaying, businesses closing. People who have been unemployed for over a year will now begin to fall into the welfare system.

We are now beginning to see in real time, from community to community across America, not just the cost of war, or the damaging financial effects on the economy but the cost of Corporate Globalization and the outsourcing of our labor. There is a powerful emergence of Transcontinental Corporations eroding our labor force by moving American jobs outside the country so they can retain a higher profit margin and disregard labor laws which safe guard employees.

According to the bureau of labor statistics Mass Layoff Data, there is a direct correlation between mass layoff and labor moved beyond our borders via outsourcing and offshoring by corporations. In June 2009, 144 metropolitan areas reported jobless rates of at least 10.0 percent, half of this percentage is due to the redistribution of labor moved from the United States to other countries. For the sixth consecutive month, all 372 metropolitan areas of the United States had over-the-year unemployment rate increases.

We should be probing into our government officials to discover exactly whose pockets are lined with the interests of transcontinental corporations. Questioning the connections between war profits of transcontinental corporations and their paid political interest of Government officials protecting the profitable businesses of military defense, while the rest of the nation goes bankrupt. Halliburton. KBR. Blackwater. Making billions off of war contracts, while the average American citizen struggles to make more than minimum wage and now trying to find a job.
If you want our jobs to remain in the United States, then you need to write to your State Senator and Representatives and DEMAND that every corporation incorporated within the United States be required to maintain 60% of their labor force and physical manufacturing facilities on United States soil or the corporation will be dissolved within 365 days. In addition, a request for the 'Made in America' labels must be made to be placed on products we manufacture

Who are the major foreign holders of US Securites as of September 2009?


Top Foreign holders of U.S. Treasuries
As of September 2009:
Holder Total
China $798.9 billion
Japan $751.5 billion
United Kingdom $249.3 billion
Oil Exporters $185.3 billion
Caribbean $171.7 billion
Brazil $144.9 billion

It is going to be extremely difficult to recover our financial recession unless drastic and forceful measures are undertaken. The main issue in financial recovery is that of creating jobs that have been lost.

Global Warming

GLOBAL WARMING FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How much has the global temperature risen in the last 100 years?
Averaged over all land and ocean surfaces, temperatures have warmed roughly 1.33°F (0.74ºC) over the last century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see page 2 of the Summary for Policymakers in the IPCC’s 2007 Synthesis Report). More than half of this warming—about 0.72°F (0.4°C)—has occurred since 1979. Because oceans tend to warm and cool more slowly than land areas, continents have warmed the most (about 1.26°F or 0.7ºC since 1979), especially over the Northern Hemisphere.
The year 1998 was the warmest on record for the contiguous United States, followed closely by 2006 and 1934, according to the National Climatic Data Center. In 2008, the U.S. saw its coolest year in more than a decade. It was the first time since 1997 that the nation has been close to its 100-year average temperature (though 2008 was still slightly above that norm). The United States was actually one of the least-warm spots on Earth in 2008 when compared to local averages. The globe as a whole had its coolest year since 2000, but the global average for 2008 was still warmer than any year from 1880 to 1996, according to NCDC.
There are slight differences in global records between groups at NCDC, NASA, and the University of East Anglia. Each group calculates global temperature year by year, using slightly different techniques. However, analyses

from all three groups point to the decade between 1998 and 2008 as the hottest since 1850.


This graph from NOAA shows the annual trend in average global air temperature in degrees Celsius, through 2008. For each year, the range of uncertainty is indicated by the vertical bars. The blue line tracks the changes in the trend over time.

How much carbon dioxide (and other kinds of greenhouse gas) is already in the atmosphere?
One of the strongest pieces of evidence for human-induced climate change is the consistent rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) in modern times, as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, where CO2 has been observed since 1958. As of December 2008, the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere was about 386 parts per million (ppm), with a steady recent growth rate of about 2 ppm per year.
Because CO2 stays in the air so long, it becomes very well mixed throughout the global atmosphere. This makes the Mauna Loa record an excellent indication of long-term trends.
This graph shows an annual seasonal cycle and a steady upward trend since CO2 measurements began at Mauna Loa in 1958.
The seasonal cycle is due to the vast land mass of the Northern Hemisphere, which contains the majority of land-based vegetation. The result is a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide during northern spring and summer, when plants are absorbing CO2 as part of photosynthesis. The pattern reverses, with an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide during northern fall and winter. The yearly spikes during the cold months occur as annual vegetation dies and leaves fall and decompose, which releases their carbon back into the air.
This graphic portrayal of rising CO2 levels is known as the Keeling curve in honor of the originator or these measurements, Charles David Keeling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Click here or on the image to enlarge. (Image courtesy Scripps CO2 Program.)

Current atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are about 30% higher than they were about 150 years ago at the dawn of the industrial revolution. According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, ice core reconstructions going back over 400,000 years show concentrations of around 200 ppm during the ice ages and about 280 ppm during the warm interglacial periods. In other words, our current CO2 levels are higher than they've been in at least the last 400 millenia. See the Scripps Web site for a graphic illustrating this trend.
Almost a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities is absorbed by land areas; another quarter is absorbed by the ocean. The remainder stays in the atmosphere for a century or longer.
Carbon dioxide accounts for more than half of the human-produced enhancement to Earth’s greenhouse effect. Among the other gases involved is methane, which has increased dramatically over the last century. Methane concentrations rose about 1% a year in the 1980s, but since about 2000 the concentration has leveled off, though a rise was observed in 2007. The reasons for this slow growth in recent years are not yet clear, although one possibility is a drop in the amount of methane leaked from natural gas pipelines and plants. Methane stays in the atmosphere for much less time than carbon dioxide (around a decade) and there is much less of it, but molecule for molecule, it is a far more powerful greenhouse gas. As of 2008, the concentration of methane in Earth’s atmosphere was about 1786 parts per billion.
Learn More
Keeling Curve Lessons (Scripps CO2 Program)
The Carbon Cycle (Windows to the Universe)
Earth's Greenhouse Gases (Windows to the Universe)
Other important greenhouse gases include nitrous oxide and near-surface ozone. Water vapor is actually the most prevalent greenhouse gas, but human activity has not directly increased its concentration in the atmosphere, unlike the other chemicals above. However, as global temperatures increase, more water vapor is released by oceans and lakes, and this in turn helps to increase temperatures further. This is one of many feedback loops that help to reinforce and intensify climate change.
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Hasn't the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere decreased recently?
People don’t always produce more CO2 from one year to the next. When the global economy weakens, emissions from human activities can actually drop slightly for a year or two. Yet the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise, as shown in the graph above. It’s a bit like a savings account: even if your contributions get smaller in a tight budget year, the total in your account still goes up.
Vegetation also makes a difference, because growing plants absorb CO2. Large-scale atmospheric patterns such as El Niño and La Niña bring varying amounts of flooding, drought, and fires to different regions at different times, which affects global plant growth. Thus, the amount of human-produced CO2 emissions absorbed by plants varies from as little as 30% to as much as 80% from year to year. Over the long term, just over half of the CO2 we add to the atmosphere remains there for as long as a century or more. About 25% is absorbed by oceans, and the rest by plants. This "balance sheet" is known as the global carbon budget.
It’s not yet clear which forests absorb the most CO2. Because the answer will influence global planning and diplomatic agreements on climate, scientists are working hard to measure how CO2 varies by latitude, altitude, and season. One such study is HIPPO, a field project led by NCAR and colleagues from 2009 to 2011 to take pole-to-pole measurements aboard an airborne laboratory, the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream V jet. Satellites such as Japan's GOSAT and others on the drawing board at NASA will help fill in more carbon-budget details.
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We've zoomed in for a closeup of temperatures over the last three decades, taken from a longer timeline discussed above. This closeup shows the annual trend in average global air temperature, in degrees Celsius, from 1975 to 2008. For each year, the range of uncertainty is indicated by the vertical bars. The blue line tracks the changes in the trend over time. Click here or on the image to see the full graph. (Image courtesy NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.)

Hasn't Earth been cooling since 1998?
Thanks in large part to the record-setting El Niño of 1997–98, the year 1998 was the warmest year globally in the 20th century. Since 2001 the global trend has been relatively flat, and 2008 was the coolest year so far this decade (see graph at left). However, a simple calculation shows that global temperatures continue to run much warmer now than in the past: the average from 1999–2008 exceeds the average from 1989–1998, even though the latter period includes the record-warm 1998.
Although scientists are confident that global temperatures will rise further in the coming decades, there could still be occasional "pauses" in warming that last a few years, like the one we're seeing now.
Some of the contributing factors to these breaks in warming could include erupting volcanoes that spew sunlight-blocking ash skyward, a lack of El Niño events, and/or the natural minimum in the 11-year solar cycle. Since we are now emerging from the most recent solar minimum, and an El Niño is developing in 2009, there's good reason to believe global temperatures will climb significantly as the 2010s approach.

Glaciers started melting long before human industrial activity. Aren't there other factors besides temperature determining whether a glacier advances or retreats?
Glacier dynamics are indeed complex, and melt rates can be influenced strongly by many factors. For example, dark particles of pollution that fall on ice and snow fields can increase melting because they absorb more sunlight than the lighter colored surface. But the vast majority of glaciers across the planet are melting, with the melt rate accelerating in many areas. This global phenomenon can be best explained by research that includes the rise in global temperatures as a main driver. The involvement of other factors does not negate the role of warming temperatures in ice and snow melt.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center tracks changes in glaciers, including where they end (terminus) and how large they are (mass balance) on its State of the Cryosphere site. Their Glacier Photograh Collection provides stark evidence of how rapid the decline is for many glaciers around the world.
What does the ozone hole have to do with climate change?
There are a few connections between the two, but they are largely separate issues.
First, it's important to know that ozone plays two different roles in the atmosphere. At ground level, "bad ozone" is a pollutant caused by human activities; it's a major component of health-damaging smog. The same chemical occurs naturally in the stratosphere, and this "good ozone" acts as a shield, filtering out most of the ultraviolet light from the Sun that could otherwise prove deadly to people, animals, and plants.
The ozone hole refers to the seasonal depletion of the ozone shield in the lower stratosphere above Antarctica. It occurs as sunlight returns each spring, triggering reactions that involve chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and related molecules produced by industrial processes. These reactions consume huge amounts of ozone over a few weeks' time. Later in the season, the ozone-depleted air mixes with surrounding air and the ozone layer over Antarctica recovers until the next spring. Other parts of the globe have experienced much smaller losses in stratospheric ozone.
Learn More
Introduction to Ozone (UCAR Education & Outreach)
Repairing the Antarctic Ozone Hole (Windows to the Universe)
Ozone Depletion (U.S. EPA)

Because of international agreements to limit CFCs and related emissions instituted with the Montreal Protocol, it's expected that the ozone hole will be slowly healing over the next few decades.
The ozone hole does not directly affect air temperatures in the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere closest to the surface, although changes in circulation over Antarctica related to the ozone hole appear to be changing surface temperature patterns over that continent. Ozone is actually a greenhouse gas, and so are CFCs, meaning that their presence in the troposphere contributes slightly to the heightened greenhouse effect. The main greenhouse gas responsible for present-day and anticipated global warming, however, is carbon dioxide produced by burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heating, and transportation.
Higher up, the loss of stratospheric ozone has led to some cooling in that layer of the atmosphere. An even larger effect comes from carbon dioxide, which acts as a cooling agent in the stratosphere even though it warms the atmosphere closer to ground level. This paradox occurs because the atmosphere thins with height, changing the way carbon dioxide molecules absorb and release heat. Together, the increase in carbon dioxide and the loss of ozone have led to record-low temperatures recently in the stratosphere and still higher up in the thermosphere. Far from being a good thing, this cooling is another sign that increasing levels of carbon dioxide are changing our planet's climate.

Isn't the natural El Niño cycle to blame for atmospheric global warming?
El Niño events can raise the average global temperature by a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit for a year or two. Likewise, La Niña events can produce a comparable cooling effect. Neither of these short-lived cyclic phenomena explain the longer-term warming observed in the last century and especially in the last 30 to 40 years.
Isn't there still a lot of debate among scientists?
The scientific method is built on debate among scientists, who test a question, or hypothesis, and then submit their results to the scrutiny of other experts in their field. That scrutiny, known as "peer review," includes examining the scientists' data, experiment and/or analysis methods, and findings.
The spirited debate around remaining uncertainties in climate science is a healthy indicator that the scientific method is alive and well. But the fundamental elements of climate change are not in dispute. To take just a few examples, we understand
• how greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap heat (see above: What is the Greenhouse Effect?)
• how much carbon dioxide we have added to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution (see above: How much carbon dioxide?)
• how observed warming has been affecting plants, animals, the ecosystems they live in, and us, the people who depend on them (see previous article: Impacts on Natural Systems)
The questions on this page represent many of those raised by debaters who are not actively engaged in climate research. Whether through lack of understanding, suspicion of science or scientists, economic motives, or other reasons, these questions have been answered again and again with evidence from research that has been tested by the scientific method. Science is a human activity, and no human is infallible, but the science reported by researchers at NCAR and our collaborating institutions around the world is built on decades of investigation and represents the current state of our knowledge on climate change.
The majority of climate scientists who specialize in understanding the complex interactions of our atmosphere, Earth, and Sun have examined the evidence, understood the remaining uncertainties, and concluded that:
Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced (U.S. Global Change Research Program, citing its 2009 report on Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States).
Changes in the atmosphere, the oceans, and glaciers and ice caps now show unequivocally that the world is warming due to human activities (United Nations, citing the IPCC 2007 report)
Here's what the major scientific organizations say about global warming and climate change, including the uncertainties climate scientists continue to examine (each opens a new window):
• Human Impacts on Climate (American Geophysical Union, 2007)
• Statement on Climate Change (American Meteorological Society, 2007)
• Statement on Ocean Acidification (European Geosciences Union, 2008)
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What can we do about global warming?
There are two basic types of response to climate change. Mitigation is reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for climate change, so that less change occurs. Adaptation is dealing with the consequences of warming and other aspects of climate change, such as changes in extreme weather events.
Because some amount of climate change has already occurred, and more change is inevitable based on the greenhouse gases already emitted, society will need to adapt. Yet in order to prevent even more-extreme climate change from happening, mitigation will be required.
Policymakers are now examining these two types of responses, including how much attention and what resources to devote to each one and how to find a balance between mitigation and adaptation.
"Business as usual" is also a choice. This option saves expenditures for mitigation in the near term, but risks higher adaptation costs to wildlife, human populations, infrastructure, and economies later on. It also increases the odds of unforeseen consequences from unchecked climate change.
The 2007 IPCC report helps policymakers weigh these options. To promote discussion of policy choices in our democracy, NCAR's parent organization, UCAR, has joined with professional societies and other members of the atmospheric sciences community to offer policy-relevant Advice to the Administration and Congress: Making Our Nation Resilient to Severe Weather and Climate Change.
As impacts on natural systems are being felt, human adaptation is already happening on some fronts. Many insurance companies are examining their practices and taking climate change into account in setting their rates and their policies. Air conditioning is becoming more widespread in North America and Europe. Some communities on small islands are already making plans to abandon their homes due to rising sea levels. The fate of plants and animals that cannot readily adapt is being discussed.
The United States joined with many other nations in signing a treaty in 1994 known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCCC, which has been ratified by 192 countries, recognizes that the climate system has no boundaries and that international cooperation is needed to seek solutions to the problems posed by rising greenhouse gases.
Considered a first step in a long diplomatic process, the Kyoto Protocol was an early and well-known agreement that emerged from the UNFCCC process. The protocol, which set modest targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, was adopted in 1997 and ratified by most countries in the world, though not the United States and Australia. Its targets have been in force for over 180 signatory nations since early 2005. NCAR scientist Tom Wigley's research has shown that adherence to the Kyoto Protocol alone, without subsequent action, would have a minimal impact on global warming. However, he notes, "This does not mean that the actions implied by the Protocol are unnecessary."
An important UNFCCC meeting takes place in 2009. The 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCC, or COP 15, will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 7–18, to focus on mitigation and adaptation strategies beyond the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in 2012.
Many U.S. cities and states have committed to reducing their output of greenhouse gases over the coming decades. Mitigation is also happening on the personal level (buying a fuel-thrifty or hybrid vehicle, for instance, or installing energy-saving light bulbs) and in private industry (a growing number of businesses and organizations have pledged to become carbon neutral).
Volunteer "citizen scientists" are recording their observations to provide information about our climate over time. Some researchers are tapping a rich historical record of bird migration and seeking new volunteers to report migration arrivals and departures. A collaboration between public and private agencies hosted by UCAR's Windows to the Universe encourages volunteers to report the timing of budburst in spring. Participants record when dormant plants produce leaves and their flower buds first open in response to climate signals.

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