Fresh Loaf

MAKIN' BANK: Clive Owen as Louis Salinger

Apart from America’s repo men, probably the only people popping champagne corks over last fall’s financial meltdown were the producers of The International. Doubtless the filmmakers wondered whether Clive Owen and Naomi Watts were big enough names to open their fair-to-middlin’ espionage-type thriller about a nefarious global bank.

Then the markets crashed and megabanks hit up the U.S. tax payers for bailout money, without curtailing their corporate fat-cat ways. With financial institutions emerging as the zeitgeist’s villains of the moment, The International’s follow-the-money suspense plot seems almost psychic. It’s like the way the Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened 12 days after the release of The China Syndrome: You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

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What do people mean when they say the nation is experiencing its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression?

Georgia’s unemployment rate just hit 8.1 percent, a 26-year high.

26-years ago, the country had barely begun to climb out of what was, at that point, the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

The job market in Georgia today is already as weak as it was during the early 1980s recession. But the current recession hasn’t bottomed-out yet. Unemployment is projected to rise until 2010.

If its a worse recession than we had from 1981-83, it’s the worst since the Great Depression.

Brother, can you spare $1.36*?

(*A 1931 dime, adjusted to its 2007 value via the Consumer Price Index)

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To survive the recession, a second Decatur small business has adopted Wall Street and Detroit’s new business model: begging.

In August, the owner of Wordsmiths books in Decatur asked the community for donations to help keep the store open.

It appears to have worked. Last time I walked through Decatur’s town square, Wordsmiths was still open.

Today, CL’s Besha Rodell and Decatur Metro report Calavino’s Italian restaurant in Oakhurst is soliciting donations to stay open.

The strangest part of the Calavino’s plea: they’re not actually asking people to dine at the restaurant. They’re only asking for money.

In related news: PayPal me $20 and I’ll cook you dinner at my house. PayPal me $25 and I’ll give you beer, wine or liquor with your meal.

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Stocks jump on report of Geithner nomination

Fortune: How to love your trillion-dollar deficit

Market Movers: This is not a financial meltdown

Salon: How to think positively about a crashing stock market

Shoestring Branding: The bright side of tough economic times

The planet gets a “breather”

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A bus-load of financial advisors will be in town Monday dispensing free advice to Georgians who need it.

TD Ameritrade is one of the event’s sponsors, but, alas, Sam Waterston won‘t be there.

Details after the jump.

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Construction of the new international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson might have to stop soon because nobody’s buying municipal bonds.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports:

The problem isn’t with the airport or the City of Atlanta, which have a solid A+ bond rating, Kennedy said.

Investors are fleeing the market and keeping their money on the sidelines out of fear, analysts say. Municipal bonds, typically, are low interest earning, but safe investments. Even in the current economic crisis, investors aren’t buying up municipal debt.

No bonds. No money. No terminal.

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“Today America was lost. The Founders weep. The German Finance Minister from 1925 and Mussolini are smiling.”

- Frequent Peach Pundit commenter IndyInjun isn’t merely unhappy about American taxpayer bailouts of troubled financial institutions. He’s also worried that a long-dead German bureaucrat and a longer-dead Italian fascist are happy about it.

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