Worst December for layoffs on record, survey says

[JohnWxy]

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/worst-december-layoffs-record-challenger/story.aspx?guid=%7B5205D26A%2D0957%2D4492%2DB8DC%2D423672CC7E91%7D


Big companies announced 166,348 layoffs in December, up 275% from a year earlier, Challenger said Wednesday in its monthly informal survey of job cuts. It's the largest number of announced layoffs in any December since Challenger began tracking them in 1993.

For all of 2008, companies announced a total of 1.2 million job reductions, the most since 2003 and 59% more than in 2007.

The financial sector accounted for about a fourth of the jobs eliminated in December. For all of 2008, the financial services industry announced plans to cut 260,100 jobs, nearly as many as the telecommunications industry cut in 2001 and 2002 as the dot-com bubble collapsed.
The auto industry cut 127,281 jobs in 2008, down from 158,766 eliminated in 2006.

[unlawflcombatnt]

1. -700,000 jobs lost in December, according to ADP

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSWEN227520090107?sp=true

If this prediction is true, it'll be the worst month in 59 years.

A -700K monthly job loss would be an annualized loss rate of -8.4 million.

It's time for TARIFFS, so we can redirect some of our $2 trillion in import purchases back into creating domestic demand, and jobs for American workers.

[JohnWxy]

2. No need to worry really. Phil Gramm says we're just suffering a "mental recession".

He's the guy who slipped the Commodities Futures Modernization Act as a rider to the Omnibus Spending bill 2000 so it could be passed (without any senators realizing they were voting on it). The CFMA is the law that legalized trading in Credit Default Swaps (along with trading in energy futures via electronic media - the ENRON loop-hole) which lead directly to the Credit Catastrophe which sent us into this second Great Depression.

Good work Phil "Mr. Magoo" (Couldn't see an economic disaster in front of his face) Gramm!

Don't blame Gramm entirely though. The bill was actually written by Wall Street lawyers. Some of his best friends.