Moving In With Kin To Weather Financial Storm

Weather Report: The Economy–Stimulate ‘Em’,’ Taxa’ You & ‘Taxa’ Me, and Moving On by Moving In

Stimulate ‘Em’: money news.newsmax.com today presented this post: “Altman: More Stimulus, Bailouts Ahead” by Dan Weil.

Writing in the Financial Times, Roger Altman, “chief executive of private equity titan Evercore Partners, says the U.S. faces a sluggish rebound from recession” and that “As a result, more fiscal stimulus will be necessary, which of course means huge budget deficits.”

Mr. Altman continues by noting that banks will require another round of recapitalization (read, “another bailout“) and with housing prices continuing to fall, the consumer (70% of the economy) will be slow to recover.

Bottom line: a slow recovery (at best!).

‘Taxa’ You & ’Taxa’ Me: “More States Look to Raise Taxes” is the title of the Leslie Eaton piece posted April 9, 2009 over at the Drudge Report.

The article’s author notes that, “A free fall in tax revenues is driving more state lawmakers to turn to broad based tax increases in a bid to close widening budget gaps.” with “At least 10 states …considering some kind of major increase in sales or income taxes” as “Income taxes and sales taxes are the go-to taxes when you really need to raise a lot of money.” (and states are really going to need to raise A LOT of money).

Moving On by Moving In: “Homeward Rebound: Weathering the Storm With Kin” by Chris Maher is the WSJ.com posts’ article on 4/07/09.

“Families around the country are weathering out the recession by hunkering down with relatives and friends. It’s not just a lower income phenomena either. The homeward bound are former white-collar and blue-collar workers who believe they have a better chance finding work in their hometown because they know more people, who, in turn, know still more people.”

And, “Kin is becoming the safety net of last resort in part because overwhelmed social service agencies are reaching their giving limits.”

A Prudent Home comment: The financial community says that there’ll be no recovery until the banks recover and the real estate community says there’ll be no recovery until real estate recovers.

Folks everywhere are talking about jobs but the “recovery money” seems to be going, again and again, to the financial sector who seems unable to recover itself or produce jobs; ditto real estate.

Perhaps someone might consider “stimulating” small business, since it’s small business that produces about 70% of the jobs in this country and it’s the working consumer that accounts for about 70% of our economy as a whole: curious number, that 70%. Just a thought.

And we have some investment advice too. Invest heavily in faith, family, friends and neighbors. In these times, the returns should be off the charts.

Until next week then, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.