This is from CNN, which like their cousin BBC, tends to gloss over the problems in UK/USA/Israel --- and paint a gloomy picture in other places.

For what it's worth, if you find this depressing..... the situation is more dire in USA, UK, Aussie, Canada, & Europe.  That's were the bubble is the biggest.....

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- In one of the world's wealthiest nations, Junpei Murasawa is a poor man.

Junpei Murasawa holds a poster reading: "I want to do an 'ordinary' job" in front of his apartment in Tokyo.

He skips meals to make ends meet. A bachelor, he lives in a tiny apartment in Tokyo, sharing a kitchen, toilet and shower with nine neighbors. He doesn't have health insurance because he can't afford the premiums.

The 29-year-old laborer is one of a burgeoning class in Japan -- the working poor. The number of Japanese earning less than 2 million yen ($19,610) a year surged 40 percent from 2002 to 2006, the latest data available, the government says. They now number more than 10 million.

In a country that boasts the world's longest-living population, where young women with Louis Vuitton bags crowd the sidewalks, Murasawa's is a voice of hopelessness and despair -- a voice increasingly heard in Japan.

"Everyday I live in deep anxiety," said the soft-spoken temporary worker, making 90,000 yen ($882) a month by bagging purchases at a home improvement center. "When I think about my future, I get sleepless at night."

The plight of such workers is likely to worsen as the global financial crisis ripples through the Japanese economy. At the bottom of the economic food chain, Murasawa and his cohorts will be the first to suffer.

The growth of the working poor -- not seen in such numbers since Japan surged to wealth in the 1980s -- has been a shock to a country that once prided itself on being a bastion of economic equality.

"It is unprecedented to see such a widening income gap in Japan," said Yoshio Sasajima, economist at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo. "Our society is definitely becoming a class society."

The seeds of changes now wrenching Japanese society were planted in the burst of the so-called "bubble economy" in the early 1990s.

As the Tokyo stock market tumbled, evaporating vast stores of wealth, corporations restructured by laying off workers. In the 2000s, that was followed by a round of free market reforms that widened the disparity between haves and have-nots.

A key to the growth of the working poor has been the explosion in temporary employment agencies, which allow corporations to take on labor without having to pay benefits -- and then unload workers at will.

As part of market reforms, the government made it easier in 2004 for manufacturers to hire such laborers, whose number has since increased 40 percent, hitting 1.33 million in 2007. About 40 percent of temps are aged 25 to 34.

"Instead of hiring costly, full-time employees, companies are bringing in cheaper, part-time workers as part of their cost-cutting efforts," said Yasuyuki Iida, an economist at Komazawa University in Tokyo.

Another factor feeding the trend is the emergence of so-called "freeters" -- 20- and 30-somethings who have opted for low-paying jobs in services such as convenience stores rather than chasing the material benefits of corporate work.

The spike in the number of the working poor is already taking a toll on Japanese society.

More people are putting off marriage because of tight finances, exacerbating a declining fertility rate. Part-time workers unable to afford rent often sleep in 24-hour Internet cafes to escape the streets. Some have stopped going to the doctor because they can't afford it.

Murasawa is typical of the new class.

He rarely eats breakfast or lunch, and says his usual dinner is a bowl of instant noodles that he picks up -- with the rest of his diet of cheap fast foods -- at the local 100-yen ($1) shop.

Rent for his 6-square-meter (64 square-foot), one-room apartment in Tokyo costs 35,000 yen ($343) a month.

Despite his poverty, Murasawa doesn't qualify for government welfare payments -- he makes too much. Japan doles out help only to single people living in Tokyo who make less than 84,990 yen ($833) a month.

Murasawa grew up poor in rural Yamaguchi prefecture, 780 kilometers (480 miles) west of Tokyo, where his parents ran a small vegetable shop. After graduating from high school, he didn't have enough money to go to university, so he began working at the store.

Bored with that life, Murasawa came to Tokyo two years ago in hope of landing a well-paying job. What he found instead was subsistence on a series of short-term labor contracts.

"Sometimes I ask myself what I'm living for," Murasawa said. To make ends meet, he's given up dining out, drinking, smoking, going to the movies or buying CDs, clothes and magazines.

"I've stopped being hopeful for the future. I've already given up getting married because I have no money to do so. Getting married is like a fairytale to me. It is utterly unrealistic," he said.

That hopelessness is spreading to pop culture.

The surprise runaway best-selling book of the year, for instance, is a Marxist novel written in 1929. "The Crab Factory Ship," by communist Takiji Kobayashi, chronicles hellish labor conditions of ship workers under a sadistic captain. The author was tortured to death by police in a Tokyo prison at age 29 in 1933.

The book has sold more than 500,000 copies since the beginning of the year, after the book's publisher, Shinchosha, linked the plight of the crab ship workers to that of the working poor in modern Japan in its advertising campaigns.

"The book must have struck a chord with the young working poor who feel that their lives are not getting any better no matter how hard they work," said Tsutomu Sasaki, a senior manager of Shinchosha. He estimated 30 percent of the book's readers are men in their 20s.

Not everybody who drops into poverty stays there.

For 10 months in 2006, Sanae Yamaguchi lived off a series of low-paying, short-term labor contracts.

"I was so miserable during that period because I always had to worry about money," the 26-year-old said.

After graduating college, she got a full-time job as an accountant at a wholesaler of electronic products in 2005 in Osaka, western Japan. But 10 months later, she was let go. Like Murasawa, Yamaguchi came to Tokyo in early 2006 in search of a better job.

But she was only able to find temporary jobs, mostly as a clerk, living in a tiny apartment where she shared a kitchen, toilet and shower with 20 neighbors on the outskirts of Tokyo.

She earned around 100,000 yen ($980) a month, and paid 43,815 ($441) for rent. Yamaguchi said she had to give up on having a TV set to save on electricity.

To her, the temporary employment route was a poverty trap.

"If you are a temp worker, you're always getting laid off, which means you don't acquire any professional skills," she said.

Yamaguchi finally emerged from her troubles in early 2007, landing a solid full-time job as an accountant at a medical company in Tokyo. She refused to divulge her salary, but said she can now dine out with her friends, buy clothes and cosmetics and live in her own apartment with a shower, toilet and kitchen.

But that old insecurity has stayed with her.

"Even though I have a good job now, I'm always worried that I could slip back to poverty anytime," Yamaguchi said. "There is no job security in Japan anymore."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20080919/ai_n28116017

Economic woes shock Britain

Deseret News (Salt Lake City),  Sep 19, 2008  by Jill Lawless Associated Press

LONDON -- This is a bad time to be a purveyor of $1,800 pens. Or a seller of champagne, sports cars or big bouquets of flowers.

Few people feel like splurging in the City, as London's financial district is known. Instead, it is convulsing from the aftershocks of the crisis on Wall Street.

Thousands of jobs have already been lost, financial institutions have disappeared overnight, rumors swirl -- and no one knows where it will end.

After years of economic boom in which City workers became famous for six-figure bonuses, lavish lunches and champagne-fueled parties, the mood has turned somber.

"The City is run by two huge emotions: greed and fear," said Geraint Anderson, a former banking analyst who chronicled a lifestyle of decadent excess in "Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile."

"People think the party is over," he said.

In cafes and pubs, as well as on trading floors, everyone is talking about the crisis that -- this week alone -- has seen the bankruptcy filing by American investment bank Lehman Brothers, the U.S. government bailout of insurer AIG, and the takeover of foundering British bank HBOS by rival Lloyds TSB.

"People are fearing for their jobs," said John Allsopp, who works in IT for an American investment bank. "And you just wonder how it got here."

The financial earthquake that began in the U.S. subprime housing market has shaken economies around the world.

Central banks from the Bank of Japan to the European Central Bank have pumped cash into money markets in a bid to revive interbank lending and stop the crisis of confidence in the world financial system from spiraling out of control.

In Russia, stock exchanges have been closed since Wednesday as authorities try to stem a plummet in share prices. But many Russians -- few of whom own stocks -- seem convinced by their leaders' assurances that all will be well.

"I don't really see what all this has to do with me," said Nataliya Zobnina, 35, a shopkeeper at a Moscow mall. "I guess the only people being affected are the big players on the market."

Ireland is among the hardest hit in Europe. An economy that boomed by wooing hundreds of U.S. companies with low corporate taxes is now on the brink of recession.

"You'd have to go back in history to find things going so badly," said John Mahoney, 39, a stockbroker taking a smoking break outside his office on Dublin's riverside. "The Celtic Tiger seems a long time ago."

Spain, whose buoyant economy was once Europe's envy, also is watching the financial turmoil with particular worry. Following the collapse of the construction boom that drove a decade of economic growth, Spain is saddled with stagnant growth, 10.7 percent unemployment and inflation at nearly 5 percent.

"There is a lot of mistrust, and in the stock market that means great volatility, and a lot of rumorology fueled by news from the United States," said Oscar Moreno, an analyst with Madrid-based brokerage Renta 4.

Other European countries are less exposed. The Lehman Brothers collapse sent chills through Europe's financial sector but may cause only limited losses. Ratings agency Standard & Poor's said potential losses at Europe's banks and insurers from Lehman's bankruptcy were "moderate and manageable."

But even France -- whose strong state involvement in the economy offers a measure of insulation -- is not immune. The finance minister has warned that mortgages will be tougher to get as banks tighten lending. The media are feeding jitters with stories about families struggling to get credit and French bankers in London fearing for their jobs.

The British economy is particularly vulnerable, thanks to a fast- deflating housing market, high levels of personal debt and a heavy reliance on the financial and business services sector, which accounts for more than 6 million jobs -- or a fifth of all British jobs.

Some 350,000 people work in the City -- about 60 percent in finance, the rest in other businesses.

Lehman Brothers' collapse alone could cost 5,000 jobs in Britain. The HBOS takeover will see more go. Estimates of the number that could disappear in the City in the next year range from 25,000 to more than 100,000.

Tudor Taylor, 53, who works in financial services, said the mood in the City was "pretty bleak." He said the crisis had made him change his own behavior.

"I drive less. I consider major purchases to be major decisions. I've become more of a bargain hunter, and I look for discounts. I'm constantly asking myself, 'Is this a good price?' I'm more cautious, I've cut down on frivolous spending."

There's evidence others are doing the same. High-end supermarket chain Waitrose has reported slumping profits, while cut-rate rivals are booming. Alcohol, cigarette and candy makers all report healthy sales as people turn to affordable luxuries while cutting back on big-ticket spending.

London theaters had a bumper year in 2007, but nervously await the impact of the current crisis. Impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber has tried to lighten the gloom by offering free tickets to "The Sound of Music" and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" to laid- off bankers.

I recently read that the future looks gloomy for the graduating class of 2009 from unviersities. I'm going to be welcomed to the club in about a year. This really sucks...I remember always thinking how graduating college will be one of the most happiest times of my life because I would feel like a new chapter is opening up in my life in terms of working a year or so before going to grad school, but I do not feel as confident or optimistic nowadays. There aren't too many opportunities with a bachelor's degree either. I think I would settle for any job after university just to work a year or two in order to save up for grad school (at least to cover half the costs!), and this is while I live at home with parents as I will not be able to save up for anything if I chose to live alone or with a roomate.

At some point, I considered teaching English abroad, but I figured that with the low pay in most places, I will have difficulty saving the amount of money I wish to save on the side.

Anyone offering a job in there? :) :) :)

I was about to crash, but this retro trash, 2-chord progression distortion intensive audio fission started blaring out the radio, and now I'm charged and decided to respond to your post.

China and Japan sometimes offer, room and board and a hefty salary to teach at really good middle schools. You would be working with advanced students who already have a basic grasp on the language. Their respective take applications around the Fall--please check I'm not certain--but there is an application and recurring interview process.

I don't know if we won't have to start learning Chinese soon instead of they our primary language. Maybe a litle Russian might be helpful too. Learn the tongues of the countries with the most natural resources factoring in the military resources available to them to defend these riches.

Good luck, to you in your studies. when I was facing your decisiond, I chose to instead stay in school and keep away from "work." Although I love to work, if you know what I mean.

_____________________

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." –Albert Einstein

 EXPLORE YOUR HORIZON

I'll go first.  I am.  Being unemployed not only means being without a livelihood, it also means a depressed state-of-mind. 

First of all, thanks for your honesty and courage, TGR.

But I strongly disagree with that statement. I'm unemployed, and I have no problems with depression. I love my life. I'm fit, active, happy, and grateful. I'm unemployed by design and by choice. I'm not broke, I have money. I'll never have to worry about money, probably largely due to that core belief, since thought creates. I believe in abundance, and so it is. I should add that I'm not rich either, and I was born into a poor family, brought up by a young, hippy single mum for whom I have endless respect.

She fell pregnant at 17 and had me at 18; how was she to know not to drop acid while I was in utero?

Would your depression continue if you didn't have to worry about money? To what degree is your depression is based on circumstance, and to what degree is it based on guilt?

The culture tells us that if we don't work, we're failures. Success in modern life on planet Earth is defined and determined by your social status, the respectability of your vocation, whether or not you made it as a doctor or a lawyer. This is pure bullshit, but we've all been conditioned to believe it on some level. We're all affected to one degree or another by consensus 'reality'. Being 'employed' is a cultural imperative, and we should hang our heads in shame if we don't go with the capitalist flow. People ask you what you do, not what you are.

I don't know about you, but I feel pretty smug and clever for creating a life of no work and all play. I'm proud of my counter-culture lifestyle, and some of my mates envy it. I felt stagnant and unfulfilled when I worked for a big company. Most people work and they fucking hate it. 75% of their waking life is sold off to further interests that aren't theirs. Who's the sucker? Not you, and certainly not me.

But yeah, I am addicted to the internet. I feel uncomfortable if I don't check in at least every couple of days. I don't watch much TV either, so I get my news online, and I don't like not knowing what's going on.

Being an internet-head is dangerous in the same way that being a TV-head is. There's something inherently insane about ignoring the beauty of 3-dimensional reality in favor of a little screen. But it's all good if you remember to look after your physical body and stay fit. Healthy body, healthy mind.

Allah increases the provision for whom He wills, and straitens (it for whom He wills), and they rejoice in the life of the world, whereas the life of this world as compared with the Hereafter is but a brief passing enjoyment.

And those who disbelieve say: "Why is not a sign sent down to him (Muhammad ) from his Lord?" Say: "Verily, Allah sends astray whom He wills and guides unto Himself those who turn to Him in repentance."

Those who believe (in Monotheism), and whose hearts find rest in the remembrance of Allah, Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest .

Those who believe (in Monotheism), and work righteousness, Tuba (it means all kinds of happiness) is for them and a beautiful place of (final) return.

Thanks for your advice.  Through my journey I have come to respect the Islamic Community and the Muslim Faith --- these two are not how the Jewish Media negatively portrays them.

But, let me honestly ask this question:  When you see some Christians who put all of their "faith" into Jesus/God, and when trouble arises, instead of actively doing something to fix it, they say/think "God will save us".

Isn't it the same when muslims do the same?  "Allah Akbar",  God willing, if this is the will of god....

Forgive me for my realistic outlook on life.  I live in a western society near all my life, and the inhabits have a very deceptive manner.  Some may say this is true of other societies/cultures, but it is especially true here.  On the outside are "nice smiles & empty promises", and on the inside are backstabbing, selfishness, and petty meaness.  I am not (and have not) "lost faith" in humanity.

Quite the opposite, I don't want to indulge in useless illusions, nor do I want to be pessimistic.  But talking about it does help ...... to some point. 

I have proven myself to be more resilient and un-compromised than most.  At the same time I can clearly see all of my weaknesses and doubts.

The Jewish Bankers instigated the first "Great Depression".  But keep in mind that was limited to the USA (for the most part).  Practicality wise, what can we do to cope/prevent them from harming us again?!?

East European Crisis may Hit Overexposed Western Europe

Front page / Business / Finance

30.10.2008 Source:

By Toni Straka

Emerging East European countries are set to become the worst nightmare of Eurozone banks with a heavy exposure to these once so profitable markets. Looking at the share prices of Italian Unicredit or Austrian Erste Bank and Raiffeisen International - all down more than 60% from their record highs seen a year earlier - the worries appear to have a very real background.

	East European Crisis may Hit Overexposed Western Europe
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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offers the saucy details in yesterday's web edition of the Telegraph. After a wave of Eurozone bank insolvencies that lead to a industry concentration through rescue mergers in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, it now appears that tiny Austria may be left holding the bucket in Eastern Europe. Loans to Eastern emerging markets have reached a critical level of 85% of Austria's GDP which is around €240 billion or €32.600 per inhabitant.

According to the Telegraph: Austria’s bank exposure to emerging markets is equal to 85pc of GDP – with a heavy concentration in Hungary, Ukraine, and Serbia – all now queuing up (with Belarus) for rescue packages from the International Monetary Fund. Exposure is 50pc of GDP for Switzerland, 25pc for Sweden, 24pc for the UK, and 23pc for Spain. The US figure is just 4pc. America is the staid old lady in this drama.

While the world has so far focused on the US banking crisis, the centre of attention will soon shift to Europe as loans in danger of default dwarf the US losses.

“This is the biggest currency crisis the world has ever seen,” said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon.

Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria – the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down – and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits.

The latest data from the Bank for International Settlements shows that Western European banks hold almost all the exposure to the emerging market bubble, now busting with spectacular effect.

They account for three-quarters of the total $4.7 trillion £2.96 trillion) in cross-border bank loans to Eastern Europe, Latin America and emerging Asia extended during the global credit boom – a sum that vastly exceeds the scale of both the US sub-prime and Alt-A debacles.

Recent interest rate moves to defend national currencies show the grade of desperation.

Hungary stunned the markets by raising rates 3pc to 11.5pc in a last-ditch attempt to defend the forint’s currency peg in the ERM.

Click here to read the full text of the article.

Sure used to be.  Not any more. 

Was TOTALLY  money related. 

Its a grim day when you can't afford to buy food or pay rent. 

Whenever I get a steady income for awhile - I never have a care in the world.

I maxed out my credit card into 5 figures (VISA was only too happy to help me do this).  Not even being able to service the interest payments had me blue for awhile until I realised that I was whipping myself (as a good debt slave should) over paying money to people who are already obscenely wealthy.

Someone told me that it was less a recession and more of a wealth transfer.

Anyway I decided to go bankrupt.  And its really not that bad.

In my country we have recently introduced a type of bankruptcy-lite called a No Asset Procedure - can't be a company director, borrow money (which is how i got into this mess in the first place), or own anything of a high value (house, nice car)  that is not related to revenue generation for a whole year.

Falling through the gaps is OK as long as money trickles in from somewhere so you can eat and house yourself and yours. 

The worst thing so far is the stigma when you tell people you're going bankrupt.

(I've been telling everyone I meet :). 

I guess its a little like telling people that you have AIDS, or something.

Status in your community is one of the most powerful forces that drive people - and I believe that much of the desperation and anxiety that people feel about a lack of money is closely related to how they think they are viewed by other people

I remember the 1987 tears of those poor folks that had to sell their BMWs, etc.

Not having enough for food and houseing is, of course, a different story.

Growing your own food can also help - so does realising that many people are in the same boat

And the bank probably won't be getting its money (created from thin air)  back.

That is the kind of helpful advice we need.  For many, there is an unconcious need/desire to be "approved" by our peers/society.

Filling for Bankruptsy can help. 

But, I recall a last year(?) that in the United States of Israel (oops, America)..... they personally changed the Bankruptcy Law so that it was no longer easy to declare ------ this was part of their plan.

The personal steps I have taken is to a) look for work (even "low level") and b) drastically reduced my spending in ALL ares (only the absolute, absolute necessity).

I have paid off my debts (only CC, some University) a couple of years ago.  It wasn't much, but it took about a year and half to pay off.   My situation wasn't as bad as most people, since I almost always paid my cash.

From my experiences around the world, I have learned several important things about life AND about myself.  I have witnessed extremely poor people living an honest and humble life.  That experience has changed me.  Most other travellers don't care about the people who are suffering in other countries.

I know this since I ask them about it, and they don't even notice the suffering -- much less care for the people they exploit <a lot of travellers go for the "sex".... they are also very disrepectful of the local culture....>.   I really dispise and hate people who exploit others.

This may be related, I think it is.  I've noticed there has been some animosity among WUFYS members.

This is really unfortunate, since there are so few of us who truly care about the sad state of this world ---- much less who actually take an positive role in trying to make it better.  

WE NEED TO WORK TOGETHER IN HARMONY.  WE HAVE A COMMON ENEMY --- A CANCER IN SOCIETY --- A DISEASE AFFECTING OUR INSTITUTIONS --- ZIONISM