Crash Survival Zone

“Home,” wrote Robert Frost, “is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Small wonder that when we’re faced with economic hardship, that’s where we retreat. As Rogan Kersh, a professor of public policy at New York University, recently told ABC News, recessions bring out our nesting instincts. [...]

by Amitai Etzioni

Much of the debate over how to address the economic crisis has focused on a single word: regulation. And it’s easy to understand why. Bad behavior by a variety of businesses landed us in this mess–so it seems rather obvious that the way to avoid future economic meltdowns is to create, and vigorously [...]

Don’t get too excited about signs of life in the economy. Some days it seems there’s good news everywhere: home sales ticking up, slower job losses, the Dow turning positive for the year. But all that misses a looming reality. American consumers, whose overspending largely got us into this mess, are still under massive pressure, [...]

Medicare and Social Security are in terrible shape. Unfortunately, private-sector health and pension plans are doing even worse.
By Daniel Gross
Unlike my colleague Robert Samuelson, I’m not too worried about the impending bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security, the government-run programs designed to provide health care and pensions to Americans. The two programs, he notes, will [...]

In times of economic crisis, Americans turn to their families for support. If the Great Depression is any guide, we may see a drop in our sky-high divorce rate. But this won’t necessarily represent an increase in happy marriages, nor is the trend likely to last. In the long run, the Depression weakened American families, [...]

By Joseph Marr Cronin and Howard E. Horton

The public has become all too aware of the term “bubble” to describe an asset that is irrationally and artificially overvalued and cannot be sustained. The dot-com bubble burst by 2000. More recently the overextended housing market collapsed, helping to trigger a credit meltdown. The stock market has [...]

Instead of working longer as the economy worsens, more Americans are calling it quits before age 66. The ramifications could be profound for the retirees, families, government and social institutions.
Instead of seeing older workers staying on the job longer as the economy has worsened, the Social Security system is reporting a major surge in early [...]

As it once sucked the life out of Main Street, the suburban mall is being reconsidered – or torn down – as towns move back to the concept of a multiuse town center.
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For at least a decade, Americans have been regularly reminded that the indoor mall was hurtling toward obscurity. The causes were manifold: the [...]

Malls, those ubiquitous shopping meccas that sprang up in the 1950s, are dwindling in number, with many struggling properties reduced to largely vacant shells.

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With their maze of walkways and fast-food courts, malls have long been an iconic, if sometimes unsightly, presence in the American retail landscape. A few were made famous by their sheer size, [...]

Poll shows they’re worried about finances and the pressure on their parents
School’s out, surf’s up, summer beckons. Time for college students to see if they can stay afloat in the worst economy their generation has known.

Young people are carrying a load heavier than they normally bear as they scatter from campuses, judging from an AP-mtvU [...]