[NetBehaviour] the recession is over

Tue Aug 25 00:29:49 CEST 2009

The recession may be over in the private sector but is yet to hit the public
sector. Next year it will be lecturers, nurses and social workers losing
their jobs. A lot of them. Arts funding will also be decimated. Don¹t count
your chickens.

Best (not)

Simon

Simon Biggs
Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk/circle/

simon at littlepig.org.uk
www.littlepig.org.uk
AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk

From: Pall Thayer <pallthay at gmail.com>
Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
<netbehaviour at netbehaviour.org>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:15:16 +0000
To: <dyske at dyske.com>, NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
<netbehaviour at netbehaviour.org>
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] the recession is over

Recession over? Not close here in Iceland. Luckily my family and I
aren't amongst the hardest hit. A lot of people here took risky loans
to buy cars and homes and various other things, some frivolous, some
not. These loans were in foreign currencies. The idea being that the
Icelandic krona would keep getting stronger therefore the payments
would get lower over time. The payments for those loans have now
doubled. But as I say, we didn't have any of those. My wife and I both
have federal student loans and we have a federal housing loan. So we
thought we were safe. When the company I work for laid off around 100
employees, I narrowly escaped losing my job. Again, we thought we were
safe. My wife teaches part-time at the university, where enrollment
has doubled, and part-time at a high school so we didn't think there
would be any problems there. The layoffs at my company weren't enough
to save it so we all had to take a pay cut. Not too much, still felt
safe. My wife had received her teaching schedule and everything was
fine. Well, the price of some things were on the rise but it didn't
seem too bad. Then my wife received an email saying that due to budget
cuts at the university they would have to drop one of her courses.
Damn, that takes a chunk out of things. Prices are still on the rise.
In fact, everything is skyrocketing now. Utilities, insurance, loan
payments, food... everything's gone up. Petrol has more than doubled.
Budget cuts in the local school system are affecting our two children.
Instead of 20 students in a class, they are now 30 and the day has
been shortened so they now have to be alone home for 2 hours before
going to school. And prices are still going up. What little surplus
income we had gradually disappeared and now our credit card debts are
slowly creeping upwards. Our savings are gone. We're living
month-to-month and we don't have enough. In the news today: On average
there are now 20 police officers working at a time. That's in
Iceland's largest urban area with a population of about 200.000.
Sometimes there are as few as 10 officers patrolling the city. Crime
runs rampant with waves of break-ins that sometimes involve violence
if someone happens to be home. On top of everything else, it's really
depressing.

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 6:08 PM, Dyske Suematsu<dyskes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Has it really been bad for you? If so, what have you experienced personally?
>
> I've been asking everyone I know around the world what their personal
> experiences are with the current recession. ALL of them described some bad
> experiences of their friends but NONE of them said they themselves suffered.
> The general consensus is that they can feel it to some degree, but feel
> disconnected from how things are described in the media.
>
> It's like how non-New Yorkers felt about 9-11. All they saw was what they
> saw in the media. Supposedly something horrible happened but they had no way
> of confirming that it's not Hollywood special effect. Many people had to
> come all the way to New York just to see the vacant lot in the financial
> district. They literally came to see nothing.
>
> Personally, I feel like the Dotcom bust was much worse than this credit
> crisis, and other people I know have agreed.
>
> But a 20-something girl in my office space told me that when she was hanging
> out with 10 of her friends, they realized that 6 of them lost their jobs
> recently. This is what I was expecting for everyone around me, but I only
> know a few people who lost their full-time jobs. I'm 42 and most of my
> friends are around 40, so it might be that only the younger generations are
> suffering.
>
> Ironically, New York appears to be shielded from this recession even though
> we triggered the whole recession. The real estate has gone down here too,
> but nowhere as bad as other states. Believe it or not, I hear that some
> neighborhoods are still going up!
>
> Either way, recessions are good for art anyway. When the economy is good, we
> become lazy, and nothing truly creative comes out, because it's better to
> keep doing the same thing to make money.
>
> My own personal take on the economy is that we are in the eye of the storm.
>
> I would love to hear other people's personal accounts of the recession.
>
> Best,
> D
>
> -
> Dyske Suematsu
> 419 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor
> New York, NY 10003
> http://dyske.com
> Phone: 646.723.3943
> http://twitter.com/dyskes
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:29 PM, dave miller <dave.miller.uk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> relax
>> phew!
>> cor blimey!
>> the recession is over!
>>
>> It's been so bad - do you know it may actually have been a depression!
>>
>> But now
>> Baby we're on our way to the moon!
>>
>> Oh yes it's been hairy over the past year
>> and TV has been pretty depressing.
>> But now there's mass jubilation and dancing in the streets
>> fuelling gains on the FTSE
>> and house prices are going back up.
>>
>> There's a remarkable upturn
>> It's noticeable
>> A surge in confidence among professionals
>> Optimism
>> Speculators and investors are getting ready
>> Bankers bonuses are back! executive pay is up!
>>
>> Now we can dream about getting jobs again
>> of going back to work
>> We can hope for some of that famed trickle down
>> To buy one of those big back 4x4's
>> that we always wanted.
>>
>> On the other hand
>> Please dont tell me it's phoney or it's a sucker¹s rally
>> or that economic pain has been merely delayed by massive government
>> bailouts
>> or what's coming is bigger and badder
>> the mother of all meltdowns
>> blood and thunder ...
>>
>> Maybe they're all lying to make it seem better?
>> Maybe it's just an attempt to sucker in our money before a big dump by
>> insiders?
>> I just dont want to hear that
>> I don't think I could bear it.
>>
>> Do you think it might be?
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>

-- 
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************
_______________________________________________
NetBehaviour mailing list
NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour

Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/attachments/20090824/dd82ac9c/attachment.htm>