Strange days, indeed

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What did you buy with your first paycheck? How have your spending habits changed – fewer new clothes and dinners out?

In New York, and WNYC’s Uncommon Economic Indicators project uncovers how New Yorkers are coping with hard economic times.

Jazzgiving started as a time for the unemployed to have lunch and talk about things they are thankful for.

And in Brooklyn, a convenience store owner says more people are buying energy drinks since the economy’s turned, to help them “feel good and work more hours.”

One thing that’s always made people feel good is rock and roll, and during last week’s Public Radio Program Directors conference in Cleveland, Ohio, Marketplace’s Tess Vigeland took time out to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and learn how rock stars have managed (and mismanaged) their earnings.

Curator Lauren Onkey talked to Vigeland about musicians like Howlin’ Wolf:

“Howlin’ Wolf’s a fantastic blues and early rock and roll singer, and he didn’t trust banks,” Onkey said. “So he demanded that he was paid before his performances and then he kept that money in his suitcase, under his chair while he played.”

View slideshow from Vigeland’s story.

Cutting back’s trickle-down effect

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Ohio has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country – 11.2% in July. Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke said this morning that the recession is “technically” over, but it will be a long road to recovery in Ohio and other places in the country where the manufacturing sector has been hit particularly hard.

Help Wanted is a new series from WCPN in Cleveland, reporting on how people are coping with job loss and the economic climate overall. Today’s piece talks about the “ripple effect” — how one person’s layoff can affect dozens of businesses in a community.

John Kraizel was laid off from his engineering job in January.
“Kraizel cut expenses down to the essentials. No dinners out. Fewer haircuts. Definitely no lawn service. And the house cleaners? He pushes his own vacuum now.

All told, Kraizel estimates he’s cut about $1000 from his monthly budget. That’s $1000 out of the local economy.”

Listen to the full story here.

The series has also reported on people looking for jobs when they are over 50 and out of work, and areas where the job market is more promising, like teaching.

Why Ohio? This week I’m in Cleveland for the Public Radio Program Directors Conference, and will be sharing some of the ideas I’m hearing from public radio folks from across the country.

Making the most of the meltdown

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Wall Street/ Credit Flickr user carlossg

Wall Street/ Credit Flickr user carlossg

Today, President Obama was on Wall Street, discussing the financial crisis and next steps on the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers meltdown. Nightly Business Report revisited the collapse and also shared Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ reaction from one year ago.

“As for Wall Street itself, there is little evidence any lessons have been learned,” NBR’s New York Bureau Chief Scott Gurvey writes.

In Congress, things are also slow to change.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) recently answered a popular question posed on Ask Your Lawmaker: “It seems that a simple fix to one of the key causes of the current financial meltdown would be to create regulation or statute that requires mortgage originators to service the loans they originate through the life of the loan. Will you enact such legislation now?”

His response was tempered:

“It is important that whoever the servicer is have full rights to restructure the mortgage. So I think it’s acceptable to say it can be sold, as long as the originator—the originator should not be able to sell the entire responsibility for the loss—the originator should have to retain some of the risk.”

Have we learned anything in the past year? On a more personal level, people are making adjustments, even where Wall Street has not. Marketplace spoke with experts and everyday people about how our habits have changed.

“Our family did little things, like making coffee at home instead of stopping at Starbucks on the way to work. And big things, like putting together an emergency fund. Even for those of us lucky enough to keep our jobs, the fear was palpable, intimate, because it was our money at stake, yet utterly global in scale,” correspondent Tess Vigeland reported.

What little things have you done to reflect the larger financial changes the country has faced this past year?

Relationships in recession

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Perhaps the most critical way the recession is affecting our lives is the toll it has taken on personal relationships. This week, our look at stories from stations focuses on family relationships that are changing due to the economic climate.

WNET in New York City hosted a question-and-answer session with Al Roker and his wife, Deborah Roberts, about the new Sesame Street special Families Stand Together: Feeling Secure in Tough Times, which addresses how families can talk to their kids when a parent loses their job.

But sometimes things don’t work out — recession or not. At WFCR in Amherst, Mass., Tina Antolini reports on how the recession is slowing down divorce proceedings.

And in May, Minnesota Public Radio told the story of couples who have had to separate temporarily to relocate to work in different areas of the country.

Has the recession had an impact on your family dynamic? How have you explained these changes to your loved ones?

P.S. The videos featured on EconomyStory can be found at the new site: videos.economystory.org, Thanks to our friends at Miro.org for setting this up!

Mapping the global economy

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Times are hard in the U.S. But how do they compare to the downturn worldwide?

A World of Trouble is an interactive map showing unemployment and other hardship indexes by country and connecting them with real-life examples.

For instance, the entry for China talks about how many fewer migrant workers are seen in Beijing now that construction has slowed. The map is from Global Post, an online-only publication that distributes through partnerships with traditional media, including PRI’s The World and PBS’ WorldFocus.

Another way of visualizing economic change is through trade routes. PRI’s The World reported on the benefits and downsides of a new trade route that would drastically change how goods travel from the Pacific side to the Atlantic side of South America. Instead of using the Panama Canal, the port city of Manta in Ecuador would be an alternative.

Mint.com puts wealth distribution in perspective with a map showing the richest and poorest areas of the world. It’s interesting to look at where the differences are vast – between different countries in Africa, for example; and where they are relatively even, like between the U.S. and Russia.

In developing nations, gender also can influence political and economic instability, as
WNYC’s The Takeaway reported this week on New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s new book on women in the global economy.

“In our travels, it seemed to us that those countries that were more effective in fighting poverty and creating stability were those that actually educated and empowered women; and that those that didn’t, were those that were most prone to instability,” said Kristof.