The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

We all know that the Christmas holiday is a time for turkey-filled table settings, overstuffed family reunions, and, quite literally, reflecting on what we are fortunate to have- for large and small blessings throughout the year. But for many jobless Americans from California to the Carolinas, finding even the smallest things to be grateful for is more of a struggle in 2011 than possibly ever before, as they not only face limited unemployment incomes, but diminishing benefits in the new year.

In fact, according to an October analysis released by the National Employment Law Project, 1.8 million out-of-work Americans will have to find a way to live if Congress fails to pass a bill extending federal unemployment payments by year’s end.…

Despite a few recent hints that the sluggish U.S. economy might be improving—including record-breaking consumer spending figures from the recent Black Friday shopping boom—U.S. President Barack Obama is ready to warn the American masses that it could take longer than expected before the country gets back on its financial feet again.

In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” program, “Obama was asked whether he underestimated how difficult it would be to fix the U.S. economy when he became president in 2009. ‘I always believed that this was a long-term project,” the Democratic president told ‘60 Minutes.’ He added it would ‘take time’ to reverse “structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades.’”

Obama added that he thought “it was going to take more than two years.…

The fairer sex appears to be getting a less than fair shake at new jobs created in the wake of the economic downturn. In October, we reported that women have recovered just 9 percent of jobs lost, and men are recovering nearly three times faster. And things haven’t gotten much better.

As The Huffington Post reported this week, “On Friday the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate among women fell to 7.8 percent in November from 8 percent the month before. The slight improvement belies the fact that the unemployment rate for women has been fairly stagnant since the recovery began in June 2009.…

Despite recent findings that the number one thing Americans waste their money on is eating out, a new survey provides the proverbial “food for thought” to those who believe they are struggling alone in their own personal financial crisis.

A report from Seattle Weekly finds that more than half of all Americans say they’ve recently gone a year without dining out, in what may be one of the clearest signs of how the current economic malaise is impacting our ability to consume even the most basic luxury choices. In fact, according to recently released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, only 49.3 percent of adults say they “dined out” between fall 2009 and fall 2010, accounting for the lowest percentage of people eating at restaurants since 2007, when just 48.7 percent of adults said they did so.…

We talk a lot here about the trials and travails of underemployment, a perpetual condition of post-recessionary America, in which many, if not most, workers face stagnant wages and/or part-time jobs that fail to keep up with the rising cost of living in the new economy.

In particular, retail workers struggle for hours amid a weak economic recovery, clamoring for extra work in this lower-skilled and paying field. In fact, according to a new article by The Huffington Post, the difference between full and part-time employment can often be the difference between eking out a living or earning a quick trip into insolvency.…

While men were the ones initially reeling from the recent recession, women are now the ones with more and more reason to worry.

According to an Institute for Women’s Research Policy report released Monday, even though unemployment levels have steadily decreased for men over the past year, very few women are able to return to work in 2011, resulting in a significantly higher percentage of female Americans who continue to have deep concerns about their financial futures. The Women’s Research Policy report surveyed 2,746 American adults 18 years and older from September to November 2010.

As the report put it, “”Women seem to have remained in the recession a year and a half after its end, and in the year since the survey was completed, women have failed to share the same gain afforded by the weak job recovery.”

According to The Huffington Post, the economic recession “has frequently been dubbed a “mancession” to refer to the fact that men were hit especially hard by the downfall.…

Poverty is now a common (and growing) problem for America’s single moms as jobs, and social safety nets fade as quickly as the economy tanked, according to a new article from The Huffington Post.

“In 2010, the first full calendar year after the Great Recession, nearly 41 percent of the nation’s single mothers with children under age 18, like Williams, lived on incomes below the federal poverty line. (Federal poverty measures differ according to family size.) New data released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday shows that few Americans fared well in 2010. About 46 million remained in or fell into poverty.…

Foreclosures? Theeeey’re Baaaaack.

After several months of falling default rates, foreclosures were up again in August 2011, rising by about 7 percent compared to the month before. In fact, according to new numbers from the real estate firm RealtyTrac, some of the biggest increases were in the nation’s wealthier places: suburbs, industrial hubs, as well as small town service worker centers, already hard-hit by the great recession.

According to a new report from PBS Newshour, that’s bad news to anyone hoping for a speedy economic recovery. “The bumps represent different sets of problems, both disheartening. First, the increases in the wealthy communities suggest that people in those counties still may be leery of spending money in the months ahead – something they need to do if the economy is to turn around.…

As we said in Part One of this series, a double-dip refers to a recession, followed by a short-lived recovery, followed by another recession. And there are plenty of signs that this second coming of an economic downturn has officially arrived in America, including the fact that our Gross Domestic Product has only expanded by 1.3%, while consumer spending is up a mere .1% in the second quarter of 2011. Add to that the fact that the national debt, and Congress’s current stalemate to raise it, is only exacerbating the U.S.’s economic problems.

So, let’s assume the U.S. has entered another recession—as shown in Part One, it’s probably not as bad as the first.  But try telling that to the many Americans who do not believe that the 2007-2009 downturn ever even ended.…

A double-dip recession refers to a recession, followed by a short-lived recovery, followed by another recession. And there are plenty of signs that this second coming of an economic downturn has officially arrived in America, including the fact that our Gross Domestic Product has only expanded by 1.3%, while consumer spending is up a mere .1% in the second quarter of 2011. Add to that the fact that the national debt, and Congress’s current stalemate to raise it, is only exacerbating the U.S.’s economic problems.

So, let’s assume the U.S. has entered another recession, it’s probably not as bad as the first.  But try telling that to the many Americans who do not believe that the 2007-2009 downturn ever even ended.…

Historically low interest rates haven’t really reaped the kind of benefits they normally would in a post-recessionary period. In reality, economic growth has stagnated, the real estate market remains in the gutter, and consumer confidence has yet to recover to pre-recessionary levels.

But bargain-basement interest is also having unintended effects, including what the Associated Press called “killing savers”—like retirees and others who depend on interest income. In turn, the Federal Reserve’s low-rate policies may actually be hurting the country’s economic prospects, reducing the income of these “savers” by some 27 percent in the last three years, and therefore decreasing the amount they can pump back into U.S.…

Few average Americans are likely celebrating the recent two-year anniversary of the period when economists and other experts say the Great Recession ended. This is especially true given that the subsequent recovery has been called “the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.”

But what’s the real reason so many are feeling less-than-jovial about the couple of years since the end of the downturn?  For one, the new economy is hardly spreading the wealth.

According to a new report by the Associated Press, “After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station.…

While a majority of economists and other financial experts firmly believe we are experiencing a modest economic recovery, a new poll reveals that a large, vocal minority of Americans feel that the economy will never fully recover from the effects of the recent “Great Recession.”

A New York Times/CBS News poll found that 39 percent of people responding believe “the current economic downturn is part of a long-term permanent decline and the economy will never fully recover.” The survey is one of many revealing overall distress with the current state of the American economic picture. Back in June, a CNN poll found that nearly half of Americans believe another Great Depression is either “very likely” or “somewhat likely.”

According to a recent article by The Huffington Post, there are even more signs that a lot of the nation’s folks are feeling financially fraught.…

Beginning in 2011, more than 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day in a cycle that will continue for the next 19 years. And with these staggering figures, many experts are calling this boomer “coming of age” a troubling pattern amid tough economic times as most mature Americans have not saved effectively for retirement and/or are still retiring too soon to catch up.

In fact, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, savings for the s-called “401(k) generation” is falling seriously short. “The median household headed by a person aged 60 to 62 with a 401(k) account has less than one-quarter of what is needed in that account to maintain its standard of living in retirement, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College for The Wall Street Journal.…

When the Rolling Stones sang “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction),” or comedian Rodney Dangerfield spoke of getting, “No Respect,” they could have just as easily been speaking about today’s labor market, full of employees, in some cases, just happy to be employed, but far from content with where they are and what they’re doing.

A new Gallup poll, based on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, showed that 87.5 percent of workers were content with their jobs in April. And while that’s up from the low of 86.9 percent in July and August of last year, it remains below February 2008’s figures when 89.4 percent of workers polled said they were satisfied with their work.…

As temperatures heat up all across the country this season, so too are concerns about inflation, with rock bottom housing prices, and a weak labor market, adding fuel to the summertime fire. The result? Tanking consumer confidence in May, at least according to a private sector report released this week, and fears of something more economically-sinister a’ brewin.’

Based on a Reuters reading of the new economic data, “The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes fell to 60.8 from a revised 66.0 in April. The reading was below economists’ forecasts for 66.5. April was originally reported as 65.4.…

Two years after experts found the recession to have ended, real estate prices continue to fall in major cities all across the country according to a new report—in some cases to their lowest level since the housing bubble burst in 2006—signifying a true recovery has yet to materialize in the beleaguered housing market.

According to a report from Arthur Delaney for The Huffington Post, this latest data “confirms that the housing market’s ‘double dip’ is at hand, and many economists say prices will continue to decline through the rest of this year. Home values dropped from February to March in 18 of the 20 cities tracked by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index, which is widely considered the leading gauge of the housing market’s health.…

You may have heard the phrase “debt ceiling” being bandied about in the media recently. But few people outside of Washington D.C.’s Beltway, and in the current Congressional fight over raising it, truly understand what the term has to do with the proverbial “price of beans.” But financial experts warn that this unending political battle over how the country handles our national debt limit, could have lasting effects on average American pocketbooks.

First and foremost, the debt ceiling itself relates to the limit to how much money our federal government can borrow to pay for services. If  (and when) America needs to borrow more than the set limit, Congress must approve the hike.…

Yes, the American employment picture is getting better. The latest numbers show that the U.S. added nearly 250,000 jobs in April 2011, making it the 14^th consecutive month of job market gains. But economists aren’t as optimistic, pointing to a lack of job diversity and higher income positions as signs things are far from back to “business as usual.”

According to a new article from The Huffington Post, “ In April, the U.S. economy added 244,000 jobs — the third straight month to see an average of over 200,000 new positions created, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.…

Just as Baby Boomers shaped the counter culture of the 1960s, this storied generation of robust lifestyles, risk-taking rebellions, and Rock-n-Roll significance is ready to yet again make its mark on America—this time, in their mid 60s. Today, Boomers now represent one-third of the total population of North America, with their highly populated presence standing as a testament to the hard lessons learned from the new economy: poor financial planning converging with uncertain economic circumstances at a vulnerable age in a working life, can have a apocalyptic impact on our nation’s more plentiful citizenry. And being that so many people are having such a tough financial time, this mature fiscal meltdown has a ripple effect on the overall American economy as millions of men and women prepare to retire in 2011 and yet are seemingly unprepared to do so.…