You Sleep When You Die

The iconic Alan Greenspan once said to the American people, “tap your home equity.” What he was really saying was to borrow against your home because your home is your personal bank. So use your ‘bank’ to get more money. Refinance! Consolidate your bills! The problem, of course, was all of the hidden clauses that allowed the real banks to raise your interest rate later and basically steal your home from you.

It might not come as a shock to know that Alan Greenspan changed his stance on the housing market after the bubble burst. If you guessed that the largest category of real estate loan loss for U.S. banks is mortgage loans, you’d be wrong. Lenders wrote off $31 billion in home equity loans and home equity lines of credit last year. That’s more than the losses on primary mortgage loans!

Unless you live under a rock, you know U.S. unemployment has grown to historic highs following the financial crisis of the last several years. For those of you who don’t fully understand the impact of unemployment in our country, check out this animated graphic; the data comes directly from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Joblessness seemed to have hit a plateau earlier this year but has increased again over the last several months. Looks like this is a bigger, longer-term problem than many people thought.

Estimates from the Boston Consulting Group suggest that women are currently the biggest emerging market ever seen…

These statistics shouldn’t be that surprising. We’ve been hearing for years about women’s growing buying power. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that women are becoming THE decision maker in more and more households. What is surprising is that more marketers aren’t taking more notice!

According to numbers released by the Commerce Department, sales continued to rise at retail stores in April at a rate higher than expected by industry experts. Combined with other recently released data on industrial production, manufacturing and consumer confidence, these figures seem to indicate that we’re well on our way to economic recovery.

However, upon further inspection, recent numbers might not be as encouraging as they originally seemed. Decreases were actually reported in several categories of retail stores, including sporting goods, electronics, hobbies, music stores, home furnishings, grocery and department stores.

So what does all this mean? Are we on the road to economic recovery or not??

Thanks for your questions! Remember, get your questions about advertising, business, the economy and more answered every Wednesday by posting comments to blog posts or on Twitter via #askjz.

“It seems there are hopeful signs for the US economy and there is much media coverage focused on Wall Street trading errors, and the Euro Zone bailout. Add in an oil spill and it seems there is little taste for discussing topics necessary to solve our underlying financial problems, including lingering unemployment.”