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Sunday, April 19, 2009

News Factoids for April 2009

ECOLOGY / GLOBAL WARMING

The Pacific Ocean garbage patch is growing ... It's now bigger than the state of Texas.
== AP news headline April 2009

"In 2006, the greenhouse gases produced by U.S. farm animals exceeded the emissions of the iron, steel and cement industries combined."
== Lisa Morgan, The Atlantic September 2008


LOST JOBS IN AMERICA

595,000 jobs lost in January 2009, worst in 35 years
== AP News headline February 2009

Jobless rate jumps to 8.1 percent in February, highest since late 1983; employers cut 651,000 jobs...
== AP News headline March 2009

3.6 million jobs lost since the beginning of the recession

The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide range of employers eliminated a net total of 663,000 jobs.
== AP news 3 April 2009
{double that number for the real figure of 17% unemployemnt}

Americans lost 742,000 jobs in March 2009.
== Air America Radio newsletter


OTHER ECONOMIC CONCERNS

"17% fewer dot-com and other standard web addresses were registered in the fourth quarter of 2008 than in the same period in 2007."
== Time Magazine

Chinese exports dropped 17.5% in January 2009 compared to a year earlier
== Time Magazine

Household debt in the U.S. soared from 60% of income in 1982 to 130% in 2007.
== Time Magazine


THE OLIGARCHY

"Over the past twenty years, the elite 1 percent [of U.S. taxpayers] saw their share of the nation's income double, from 11.3& to 22.1%, but their tax burden shrank by about one third [from 33.1 percent to 22.8% percent]."
{ **emphasis added } == The Nation Magazine

"From 1973 to 1985, the [U.S.] financial sector never earned more than 16 prcent of domestic corporate profits ... [During the Bush Administration] it reached 41 percent."
== Simon Johnson, in The Atlantic

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