Wake up! It’s a new week, with more terrible information! This time around, let’s look at how many jobs have recently evaporated:

RTFA: http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1683

This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession – showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been. Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.

By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.

RTFA: http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/26/news/economy/job_c…

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The final week of January began with a bloodbath for the job market, as over 71,400 more cuts were announced on Monday alone.

At least six companies from manufacturing and service industries announced cost-cutting initiatives that included slashing thousands of jobs.

More than 200,000 job cuts have been announced so far this year, according to company reports. Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost over 2008, the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945.

“It’s all about the consumer, and the consumer’s been hit hard,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at Fact and Opinion Economics. “It’s a vicious circle as weakness begets layoffs, which beget more spending weakness.”

shitty. Apparently the hope & optimism the average American feels towards president Obama’s inauguration has not applied to big business & investors. The article also states that the recession will bottom out in the second quarter of 2009 and then we’ll see a rebound.

RTFA: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jan/07/higher-ga…

All that money you’re saving these days at the gas pump? You might want to put it in the bank.

The same cheap oil that’s providing relief to drivers and businesses in an awful economy is setting the stage for another price spike, perhaps as soon as next year.

The oil industry is scaling back on exploration and production because some projects don’t make economic sense when energy prices are low. And crude is already harder to find because more nations that own oil companies are blocking outside access to their oil fields.

When the world emerges from the recession and starts to burn more fuel again, and higher demand meets lower supply, prices will almost certainly shoot higher.

This is unsettling… It seems clear to me that in a competitive market, such an “inevitability” would mean an imminent opportunity to destroy your competitors. Here is the scenario: if every oil company scales back now, then down the road, they will all raise prices because supply is lower. If just one company continues building capacity for the future, they will be able to systematically beat the prices of the competitors, and without “Standard Oil”-style price fixing, that single company will be vastly more competitive than the others.

It seems to me that, in the absence of such competition, and with the “inevitability” of higher prices in the future, this constitutes evidence of price fixing… with the nominal excuse being that it’s just “supply and demand.” Criminals!

RTFA: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/12/what-recessio…

Privately-owned PriveCo, which specializes in retailing “embarrassing” products online, has paid $1 million for the acquisition of the domain name vibrators.com (a little NSFW).

PriveCo began selling private things out of a spare bedroom on a website called ShopInPrivate.com back in 1998, and has steadily grown to an operation with 12 separate retail sites whose warehouse ships 1500+ packages per week.

Erm, FYI… Seems there’s still a booming market for domain names.