Investors worry stocks will get crushed in a recession; Here’s how they did in past downturns

Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer, On Sunday October 9, 2011, 12:36 pm EDT

NEW YORK (AP) — Are investors overreacting to the prospect of a recession?

The slightly better jobs report on Friday notwithstanding, the odds of a recession appear to be climbing, and that’s bringing back scary memories. Though stocks may look cheap thanks to record corporate profits, that was also true the last time the U.S. was heading into a downturn. Based on recent recessions, profits could fall a third if the economy crumbles.

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President Obama, talking about his jobs bill in a news conference Thursday, called the economic situation “an emergency.”

By ROBERT PEAR
Published: October 9, 2011

WASHINGTON — In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.

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$5 debit card fee

By Ben Popken on October 7, 2011 5:00 PM

The new $5 monthly fee Bank of America is charging debit card holders wasn’t just picked because the spreadsheet guys really like Subway $5 footlongs. There’s actually a calculation behind it. Here’s the math.

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Karen Bleier/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

News Analysis

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: October 8, 2011
David Leonhardt is The New York Times Washington bureau chief.

UNDERNEATH the misery of the Great Depression, the United States economy was quietly making enormous strides during the 1930s. Television and nylon stockings were invented. Refrigerators and washing machines turned into mass-market products. Railroads became faster and roads smoother and wider. As the economic historian Alexander J. Field has said, the 1930s constituted “the most technologically progressive decade of the century.”

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October 9, 2011 7:58 pm
By Henny Sender in Hong Kong and Michael MacKenzie in New York

Asian and Middle Eastern central banks and sovereign wealth funds are increasingly anxious about the safety of their investments in the debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , despite the assurances of US government officials.

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Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
Created: 10/08/2011 08:36:40 PM PDT

Grand Jury testimony given by Rancho Cucamonga developer Jeff Burum in 2009 could prove beneficial to his defense and should have been provided to a criminal grand jury in April, according to Burum’s attorney.

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DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
STAFF WRITER
dsantschi@pe.com

Published: 08 October 2011 10:43 PM

Colton city officials are warning that state-imposed renewable energy requirements could force the city to raise rates paid by the city’s 18,000 electric utility customers.

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Capitol Alert
The latest on California politics and government
October 8, 2011

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation today that would have allowed the University of California and California State University systems to consider race, ethnicity and gender in student admissions.

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By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: October 8, 2011

LOS ANGELES — Facing an unprecedented order from the Supreme Court to decrease its inmate population by 11,000 over the next three months and by 34,000 over the next two years, California prisons last week began to shift inmates to county jails and probation officers, starting what many believe will be a fundamental and far-reaching change in the nation’s largest corrections system.

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By Alexander Bolton – 10/08/11 02:14 PM ET

Senate Republicans vow they will retaliate for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) decision to unilaterally change the Senate’s rules Thursday without prior warning or negotiation.

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