What do the jobless do when the benefits end? - (www.washingtonpost.com) The
end to federal jobless benefits for nearly 2 million people has sparked a
bitter debate in Congress about whether Washington is abandoning desperate
households or simply protecting strained government coffers. It is also
providing real-time answers to a question economists have long pondered: How do
people survive when they suddenly have no money coming in? Studies show that
about a third of the people cut off from long-term unemployment benefits will
find help from Social Security or other government programs. Others will cobble
together dwindling savings or support from family. But most baffling to
economists are the people who appear to come up with more-idiosyncratic
solutions, which are tough to identify and almost impossible to track. Take
Wessita McKinley of Capitol Heights. The Maryland woman had to think outside
the box after her contract with a local school board ended last summer. An Air
Force veteran, she earned a six-figure salary as a private contractor before
the recession. But she took a series of increasingly low-paying jobs as the
economy soured.
Fresno
REALTOR Will 'Die in Prison' HAHA! My God is Good! Die, Asshole, Die! - (www.mortgagedaily.com) Realtor
and his Husband headed to prison for Mortgage Fraud!! A judge mostly refused to
go easy on former Modesto real estate broker James Lee Lankford on Monday,
sentencing the 75-year-old to 10 years in federal prison for swindling nearly
$10 million from lenders and elderly homeowners. His husband, Jon, 49, was sentenced
to five years of probation and will care for their four adopted, special-needs
children under a deal worked out with U.S. attorneys. About two dozen of their
victims made the trip from Modesto, some telling Judge Anthony Ishii how James
Lankford had gained their trust, then swiped their homes or retirement savings
and ruined their health. "(James Lankford) will die in prison; I'm happy
with that," said John Rivera outside the courtroom. His parents, Mike and
Pat, were among the victims. Lankford, who owned Century 21 Apollo, "lied,
cheated and defrauded" Paul Triller, duping him into signing a bogus
document before he died in 2010, said Triller's daughter, Carol Rogers.
"He suffered so much stress and anxiety and we all believe that shortened
his life," she said. "He not only (defrauded) people he doesn't know,
he's done that to his friends and family, too," said Patrick Wright.
"He's a liar, a thief and a wolf in sheep's clothing."
World asleep as China tightens deflationary
vice - (www.telegraph.co.uk) China's
Xi Jinping has cast the die. After weighing up the unappetising choice before
him for a year, he has picked the lesser of two poisons. The balance of
evidence is that most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong aims to prick
China's $24 trillion credit bubble early in his 10-year term, rather than
putting off the day of reckoning for yet another cycle. This may be
well-advised for China, but the rest of the world seems remarkably nonchalant
over the implications. Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and the commodity bloc are
already in the cross-hairs. "China is getting serious about
deleveraging," says Patrick Legland and Wei Yao from Societe Generale.
"It is difficult to gently deflate a bubble. There is a very real
possibility that this slow deflation may get out of control and lead to a hard
landing."
Farm
Profits Seen Falling as Five-Year Crop Boom Ends - (www.bloomberg.com) “We’re looking at an era of about three, four,
five, years of reduced profitability in agriculture,” Matthew Roberts, an
economist at Ohio State University in Columbus, said before the report was
released. Without significant disruptions to crop production, “by 2015, 2016,
farms that expanded very rapidly over the last few years could be vulnerable,
and we would see the first significant farm failures.” The slump in the value
of U.S. crops will erode prosperity in Corn Belt states, harming rural business
and, if sustained, may lead to a wave of farm failures for the first time in a
generation, Roberts said.
Yes,
There’s a Pilot Shortage: Salaries Start at $21,000 - (www.businessweek.com) A
pilot shortage has forced smaller airlines to cancel flights and ground jets, a
side effect of federal regulations that have dramatically increased the minimum
number of flight hours required for new pilots. The labor shortages and service
cuts have hit first and most sharply at the regional airlines that ferry
passengers from small markets on behalf of bigger carriers. One of the largest
regionals, Republic Airways Holdings (RJET),
plans to stop flying 27 of its 41 Embraer (ERJ) 50-seat
jets because of the pilot shortage. That decision will lower income as much as
$22 million this year, Republic said today in a regulatory filing. In 2010,
Congress mandated that airlines’ first officers would need to hold an Airline
Transport Pilot certificate–which requires at least 1,500 flight hours (PDF)–as opposed to the 250 hours and
commercial pilot certificate previously required. The new rules, which took
effect in August, came in response to the 2009 crash of a Continental Express
regional flight, which investigators linked to shortcomings in the pilots’
training.
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