Job Market - 6 careers you can do from home

by Claire Bradley

Wednesday, November 3, 2010provided by

 

Working from home can be a great career option for people with all skillsets and lifestyles. You can set your own hours and even work in your pajamas - a pretty appealing alternative to the old nine-to-five in a cubicle. Here are six careers you can do from home, and how you can get started.

1. Personal Chef
If cooking is your passion, becoming a personal chef may just be the job for you. This job can mean that you cook a week's worth of meals in a client's home, for instance, or you can look at delivering gourmet meals - the alternative to the old pizza delivery. With today's high-pressure jobs and families where both parents work full time, this type of service is becoming more desirable, particularly in urban areas. Be sure to understand local regulations regarding the kitchen you prepare the food in; many states require you to have a kitchen separate from your home, and may inspect for health code adhesion.

More from Investopedia: • 8 Tips For Starting Your Own Business • 6 Simple Steps To $1 Million • 6 Extreme Ways To Land Your Dream Job

2. Birthday Party Planning
If you talk to any parent, they'll tell you: planning a birthday party is hard work, and a challenge when you're busy. Where there's a need, there's a job, and birthday party planning can be a great career if you're creative, like kids and can work weekends when parties are often held. You can also plan retirement parties, promotions - any event you think you can handle. For the best changes at earning a good income, make sure you research local rates and competition and understand your liability, particularly if you'll be working with little ones.
3. Home Staging
It's a tough real estate market out there. To sell your house in this buyer's market, it needs to look its best, and home staging can make all the difference. If you have an eye for design, home staging may just be the career for you; there are no education requirements, and although there are many courses and professional organizations for home stagers, they're not required to be successful in the field. Take some time to research rates in your area and practice staging your home or a friend's. Think about what services you'll want to offer, and the startup costs you'll incur. Networking with realtors can be very helpful in generating business.
4. Web Design
Are you computer savvy, and do you have an eye for detail? A career in web design may be for you. Even if you don't have the skills, consider going back to school to learn; there are many online courses, and current education tax benefits can make the bottom-line expense very low. Before you hunt for jobs, think whether you'll be starting your own business or work as a freelancer - the two are very different tax and legal-wise. Check with IRS on tax obligations, and with your local small business chapter. (To learn more, see Freelance Careers: Look Before You Leap.)
5. Virtual Assistant
With today's uncertain economy, more businesses are looking to hire temporary or per-project help, sometimes in the form of a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant can handle anything from receptionist duties to bookkeeping, depending on your expertise and the client's needs. For work in this field, look to online job boards. Tell your friends and family you're looking for administrative-type work to do from home, and check with any old business contacts you may have. Virtual assistants are still a fairly new concept, so expect to have to explain what you do a few times before generating business.

6. Tutoring Service
These days, problems are increasingly solved with use of the internet, including tutoring services. Work as a tutor can be helping a child with homework, or teaching adults how to use a computer - if you have a specific skill, you can become a tutor. You can find work on job boards, or at online colleges. If you have a college degree in your expertise (like math, or English), your chances at building a successful career as a tutor will be even better.
The Bottom Line
These six careers are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to at-home careers. For the best chance at success, look at your previous career for a start - you may be able to work as a consultant. At-home careers are a great way to explore your passion and make a living too. Earnings can vary greatly, depending on your expertise and experience, so take time to research before setting your rates. Make sure you understand your tax obligation, and whether you might be best off starting a small business to protect yourself legally. Your local small business organization or SCORE chapter is great place to get some help. Whether you're designing web pages or starting a small business as a party planner, working from home can be a great way to forge own your career path - and avoid the cubicle doldrums, too. (For more, see Can You Handle A Home-Based Business?)

Special Report: Was a Houston energy trader, Stephanie Rae Roqumore, a one-woman Enron?

By Anna Driver and Eileen O'Grady
Mon Nov 15, 2010
HOUSTON (Reuters) - By the standards of recent financial scandals, Stephanie Rae Roqumore's alleged $6.8 million natural gas trading scam may be small potatoes, but it raises some big questions.

How could a lone natural gas trader in Houston dupe some of the world's biggest energy companies for eight years, despite a veritable forest of red flags? After all, the overhaul of trading rules and credit practices in the wake of Enron's collapse was supposed to make it tougher, if not impossible, to perpetuate such a fraud.
In September, FBI agents raided Roqumore's suburban Houston home, searching for evidence she scammed at least 11 energy companies. Among the stacks of paperwork seized from the ornate 3,000-square-foot house were bank records for trading firms Roqumore is accused of using to dupe companies including Occidental Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell Plc's Coral Energy Resources, Hess Corp and privately-held commodities giant Cargill.
Federal agents also recovered two handguns -- one found under a mattress -- ammunition, documents for a million-dollar life insurance policy and a summons from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the search and seizure warrant.
The $6.8 million scheme laid out in a 19-count indictment charging wire fraud and money laundering seems straightforward. "We are sifting through the evidence at this point and Ms. Roqumore maintains her innocence," Wendell Odom, Roqumore's attorney, said in an statement.
Roqumore, 48, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, is accused of purchasing natural gas from firms by submitting false financial statements to the companies to obtain lines of credit. She would then sell gas to counter-parties like ConocoPhillips, paying back either a fraction of the purchase price or nothing at all in some instances, according to her indictment.
Court records and public documents contain numerous red flags indicating Roqumore was in financial trouble. Public records also show a guilty plea to a felony theft charge in 1999. Roqumore and her parent company, SRR Energy Management Resources, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2006, yet firms continued to extend her credit to buy natural gas up until April 2010.
"What is sort of surprising is that she was able to get away with it for so long," said Craig Pirrong, director of energy markets at the Global Energy Management Institute at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business.
Her arrest warrant was signed by a federal judge on September 13. She is free on $50,000 bond, but is banned from working in finance and may not be self-employed. She is also barred from taking out any lines of credit. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes in Houston has set a trial date for January 18.
According to her attorney, Roqumore has a new job, a condition of her release. Gas Energy Management, one of the companies she created to trade, is now shuttered. Gas Energy Management's former office suite, located in a leafy Houston neighborhood, now houses a staffing company.
Roqumore faces a lifetime in prison if convicted and sentenced for the maximum penalty on all charges. She also faces a $3.75 million forfeiture fine, according to the indictment.
Hess, Cargill, Shell and Occidental declined to comment on the case.
WHO IS SHE?
A relative unknown in Houston's active gas trading community, Roqumore nonetheless managed to gain entry to do business with well-established companies at a time when trading practices were under heavy scrutiny by regulators.
As a one-person company, Roqumore's alleged false financial documents might have been difficult to verify, said Art Gelber, founder of Gelber & Associates, a Houston-based advisory firm specializing in energy trading practices and protocols. Established energy marketers might have been willing to do business with new partners at that time, Gelber said. "In times of trauma, there is opportunity," he said.
According to a transcript of a creditors meeting for her bankruptcy case, Roqumore said she worked as an accountant in the oil and gas industry for 15 years at companies including Halliburton Co, Dynegy Inc and failed energy giant Enron Corp.
While she did not trade when working at those companies either as an employee or contract employee, she said she handled the back-office accounting after energy deals were done. In that role, Roqumore gained the knowledge needed to buy and sell natural gas and also developed relationships with traders.
"My visibility with the traders was on a regular basis on the trading floor," Roqumore said in the bankruptcy case document.
While an accountant by training, Roqumore said she failed her Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam in 1990, according to a transcript that was part of her bankruptcy case.
She initially did well in her gas trading in 2002, but began to run into trouble a year later, when prosecutors say she purchased $1.5 million of natural gas from a marketing unit of Dominion Resources with credit obtained by falsified documents. The marketing unit was never paid for gas delivered in April and May, according to court documents.
The Dominion unit sued in 2005, winning a summary judgment of $1.8 million, including interest, against SRR Energy Management Resources. Roqumore is the sole shareholder of SRR.
"We've never collected on it because nobody could ever locate any assets," a Dominion spokesman, said, adding that his company is cooperating with the FBI investigation.
By late 2003, Roqumore said she wasn't making any money trading. "I would end up selling (gas) for less than what I purchased it for, just to get rid of the gas," she said in court documents.
She continued trading just to bring money into her firm and was growing increasingly desperate to get back to the days where she was making good money trading.
"You think, well maybe, this is the month," Roqumore said in bankruptcy documents. "You were making great deals, but now all of a sudden, you're just not," she said.
Roqumore, who has one son, made enough to live in a large brick home with a well-manicured yard in the upscale "Shadow Creek Ranch" development 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston. Bankruptcy documents showed she owned three Lexus luxury automobiles and a high-end Florida time share near Orlando.
"It seemed like she had it all," neighbor Belva Smith told Houston television station KTRK soon after Roqumore's arrest. "She had a pretty good life, nice cars. She just sent her son off to college."
In bankruptcy documents, SRR Energy Management Resources showed 2004 gross receipts of $4.5 million. That fell to $2.4 million in 2005 and to less than $638,000 in the first half of 2006.
To help keep her trading operation afloat, Roqumore pursued her gambling hobby, making frequent trips to Louisiana casinos. She scored her first "real win" of $10,000 in October 2002, but casino records submitted as part of her bankruptcy case show she had good years and bad years.
Roqumore favored slot machines, a game with house odds that are hard to beat. She routinely withdrew tens of thousands of dollars from her bank accounts to gamble, she said in court documents.
HOW DID SHE DO IT?
Natural gas trading collapsed in 2002 after Enron failed and charges of gas price manipulation sent a dozen gas traders to jail.
In those cases, traders were accused of reporting false prices -- favorable to their companies -- to specialized industry publications that used the prices to create indexes used to establish gas values.
In addition to prison terms, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined 12 companies, including Duke Energy, American Electric Power Co Inc, El Paso Corp and others more than $272 million for false gas price reporting from 2002 to 2005.
Dynegy, El Paso, Williams, Reliant Energy and many other firms shrank their trading desks and drastically restricted gas marketing activity. "A lot of businesses seriously underestimated the credit risk associated with energy trading in the pre-2002 era," the University of Houston's Pirrong said. "Certainly, that was not the case afterward."
Concerns about counter-party credit risk led to increased use of clearing procedures for derivatives-based energy transactions, but that did not impact the type of physical gas trades used by Roqumore.
"There has been more scrutiny of credit, but that doesn't mean you are going to have a 100-percent perfect system that is going to pick up everything," Pirrong said. "A clever fraudster may be able to get away with it for a while. The industry tightened up its credit standards and its credit practices after its near-death experience in 2002."
In the early 2000s when Roqumore is alleged to have opened her own gas trading firm, it was often tough for anyone to get credit to trade natural gas. That "was one of the main laments and one thing that was causing trading volumes to dry up and pushing people to clearing," Pirrong said.
Organizational changes at companies that bought and sold energy commodities and the hiring of chief risk officers have since altered gas trading from the pre-Enron days, he said.
The Committee of Chief Risk Officers was formed in 2002 as an independent group to inject some discipline into trading by developing best practices to standardize risk and financial management activity in both physical and financial energy trading.
As a result, Pirrong said, the industry is doing much better in recognizing the potential for problems.
"Nothing teaches a lesson like people going to jail," he said. "The industry did tighten up, not to say it's perfect." (Editing by Jim Impoco and Claudia Parsons)

Job Market - MBA job placement rate on the rise By Monique Smith

Source: graduateguide.com

Now that the nation is slowly recovering from the recession, MBA degree holders are finding that the degree's job placement rate is increasing as well.

According to Businessweek, all but three of the 30 top-ranked MBA programs saw a rise in their rates of students finding employment within three months of earning their degree.

Few schools, however, have seen their job placement rates rise to the highs experienced in 2007, before the recession. At that time, the news source reports, the vast majority of students were offered multiple jobs and garnered large signing bonuses.

The rise in the job placement rate was significantly aided by a jump in hiring late this summer.

"We held our collective breath all summer. Our numbers took a rather significant surge in the late summer, just before the closing of my books," Read McNamara, executive director of the career management center at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management, told the source.

According to Payscale.com, individuals who hold an MBA can become financial analysts, marketing directors, CFOs and CEOs, and can earn up to $208,000 each year.

By Monique Smith

Part-Time MBAs: Greater Expectations

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

UT-Dallas' Monica Powell explains why today's part-time MBA students want more from their degrees—and the career-management office—and what this means for academic programs

Interest in part-time MBA programs has been growing steadily during the past few years, as students who were worried about the economic outlook opted to pursue degrees that allow them to hold onto their current jobs while in school. There were 66,183 students enrolled in part-time MBA programs in the U.S. in the 2009-10 academic year, up from 64,305 in 2008-09, according to member school data from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, one of the leading accreditation agencies.

The new generation of part-time MBA students is registering a shift in expectations about what it wants from school. Students are demanding more assistance than ever from career services as they pursue the degree for almost entirely different motives than their predecessors displayed, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Dallas' School of Management. Of the students surveyed, about 67 percent said they expect to get a new job after earning their degree. That's a change from years past, when most students chose to stay in their current jobs after graduating, the study said.

Monica Powell, associate dean at the UT-Dallas School of Management (UT-Dallas Part-Time MBA Profile) and author of the study, has been tracking the pre-MBA expectations of incoming part-time MBA students for nearly two decades. Her school runs a part-time MBA program with 600 students, letting her observe the students first-hand. When she came to suspect that the new generation of students entering part-time programs was coming in with a different mind-set than those she had worked with in the 1990s, Powell says she decided to put her theory to the test.

She asked four public and four private schools with part-time programs—including Wake Forest University's Schools of Business (Wake Forest Part-Time MBA Profile) and University of California, Irvine's Merage School of Business (Merage Part-Time MBA Profile)—to participate in a survey that asked incoming students about their expectations about everything from faculty and career outlooks to networking.The survey was distributed to 1,116 entering part-time MBA students from April to September of this year.Powell presented the study's finding on Oct.21st at the Annual Part-Time MBA Conference at DePaul University (DePaul Part-Time MBA Profile).

Bloomberg Businessweek's Alison Damast recently spoke with Powell about the findings and how the part-time MBA landscape is shifting for both schools and students, particularly on the career front. Here is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Is there a generational shift taking place in what part-time students expect to get out of their degree?

Back in the 1990s, when I conducted this type of research, I'd ask part-time students about their post-degree expectations. A lot of them talked about how they were getting the degree so they could move up in their organization, advance their opportunities with their employer, and take on a bigger chunk of responsibility. When you talk to this current group and ask them why they are pursuing this degree, students say they are doing it because they want to make themselves more marketable in the job arena, distinguish themselves from others, and further their educational backgrounds. It's partly generational because of Gen Y and the Millennials, but there's been a shift away from doing the degree for the company toward doing it for themselves. For them, it is almost as if they are doing this as an insurance policy for their careers. If they are going to be on the chopping block, maybe they will be later in line if they have this degree, as opposed to the head of the line.

It seems like part-time students are more paranoid about their jobs because of the economy. Are their behavior patterns shifting at all when it comes to how they balance work and school life? It's interesting because students used to tell me all the time that the way they'd get through the program was by giving up time at work or leaving the office a couple of hours early to pursue a class project. When we ask students today, they say they are going to give up things in their personal life, whether time with their husband, family, or friends or giving up yoga. I think that's also a reflection of the economy. They don't want anyone at the office to think they are slacking off or letting the degree take time away from their job. They don't want to do anything that will create any bumps in the road.

Fewer companies today are sponsoring students in part-time programs. Is that changing students' mind-sets?

Yes, there are fewer firms willing to reimburse tuition at the same rate they were pre-2008, but that has been declining pretty rapidly across graduate education. Companies just aren't giving up that discretionary funding and are not supporting students the way they used to. As a result, today's students don't feel that same sense of loyalty to employers because they haven't invested in them.

Part-time students seem to be demanding more career assistance than ever before from part-time MBA programs these days, with 87 percent of those surveyed indicating they expect the school to provide them with resources and connections to find a new or better job after graduation. How is that different from the past?

There was a time when a part-time MBA student could not take advantage of anything in a career-management office unless they had a signed permission slip from their company. The companies were reimbursing the students and they didn't want the schools to help them leave the organization. Now, with fewer companies reimbursing, there are just a handful of schools where that is still a requirement or where that is expected. Here at the University of Texas at Dallas, our career-management office is open to all of our students, including part-time ones. This is relatively new at most schools, but it is an increasing trend over the last few years and I think it will be a snowballing one. Companies are probably going to get out of tuition reimbursement in a complete way in the future, so it will fall to the schools on how they are going to build this resource in order to meet the needs and expectations of this particular audience.

What types of career moves do part-time students want to make and are business schools' career services offices prepared to meet their needs?

I think all the schools are thinking now about where they are going to [find] the career staff to support the part-time students. The students have pretty high expectations from a career-management perspective for themselves. About 51 percent of respondents said they expect their salary to increase 16 percent or more after graduation and 68 percent expect to receive a promotion within 6 to 12 months. The question is: Is that a reasonable expectation in a market like this? To have that particular expectation coming into an MBA program is a little bit problematic for our career-management operations. The schools need to ask themselves what they need to be doing for students to either help them accomplish their objectives or modify their expectations so that they aren't as high. You don't want to blow a hole in their hopes or their dreams, but you also want to be sure you are providing them the expected career-management support to be able to execute that.

The reasons behind Obama's visit to India

Obama sees 'win-win' relationship with India

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Erica Werner, Associated Press – Sat Nov 6, 2010

MUMBAI, India – President Barack Obama announced a host of new trade deals with India supporting tens of thousands of U.S. jobs Saturday as he began a 10-day trip through Asia on a determinedly domestic note.

Intent on demonstrating his attention to the sluggish U.S. economy even while overseas, Obama also told a meeting of U.S. and Indian executives that the U.S. would relax some export regulations that have complicated trade between America and this fast-growing country of 1.2 billion people.

"As we look to India today, the United States sees the opportunity to sell our exports in one of the fastest growing markets in the world. For America, this is a jobs strategy," the president said in a speech to the U.S.-India Business Council. The remarks also were aimed at U.S. voters who punished Democrats in the midterm elections in part over continued high unemployment.

Obama said it should be a "win-win" relationship with India, but in a nod to U.S. sensibilities he also acknowledged concerns in the U.S. about outsourcing.

"There still exists a caricature of India as a land of call centers," the president said.

He said people in India also are concerned about the impact of U.S. goods coming into their country, but contended that growing trade could only benefit both sides in the long run. He said he sees huge untapped potential in the relationship, noting that India doesn't even rank among America's top 10 trading partners.

"There is no reason this nation can't be one of our top trading partners," the president said.

To that end he said the U.S. would seek to reform export controls that resulted from past administrations' concerns about India's nuclear industry. The changes, which have been much sought-after in the business community, include relaxing controls on India's purchase of so-called "dual use" technologies that could be used for civilian or military purposes, and removing a few of the last remaining Indian companies on a so-called "entities list" of groups that face restrictions on doing business in the U.S.

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The commercial deals he announced include the purchase of 33 737s from Boeing by India's SpiceJet Airlines; the Indian military's plans to buy aircraft engines from General Electric; and preliminary agreement between Boeing and the Indian Air Force on the purchase of 10 C17s.

For the most part, the deals were already pending, but the White House contends Obama's visit to India helped finalize them. Officials said the deals would support 53,670 U.S. jobs, but it was not clear how many, if any, new jobs would be created as a result.

Obama addressed the business leaders shortly after arriving in Mumbai, where his first stop was at the Taj Mahal hotel to commemorate the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people across the city. The president said he intended to send a signal by making Mumbai the first stop of the trip and by staying at the Taj, which was a target during the terror siege.

"The United States and India stand united," he said.

"We'll never forget.

But illustrating the difficulties of the U.S.-India relationship, Indian commentators quickly seized on the president's failure to mention Pakistan. Pakistan was the home of the 10 assailants, the place where they trained and the base they used to launch the attack.

Pakistan is also India's archrival — but a linchpin for Washington and its allies in the war in Afghanistan.

After his remarks on the terror attacks, Obama visited a museum in a home where Mohandas Gandhi once lived.

The president is aware of sometimes being perceived as antibusiness in corporate America, and said after the elections that he wanted to change that perception. Much of Obama's day Saturday appeared geared toward that goal.

Before speaking to business leaders, he met separately with some of them, letting reporters look on as he tied his mission to U.S. job creation and proclaimed the importance of working with fast-growing economies.

The White House also arranged for four American chief executives who are in India for the occasion to brief reporters traveling with the president. They talked up the importance of India as a trading partner and praised Obama's decision to come to the country to underscore that point in person.

Obama was spending three days in India, his longest stretch yet in one country, a point U.S. officials have been careful to emphasize as they play up the administration's interest in nurturing the relationship. On Sunday he heads to New Delhi, the capital, where he will address the parliament.

After India, Obama is scheduled to travel to Indonesia, where he lived for four years as a youth. From there he goes to South Korea for a meeting of the Group of 20 developed and developing nations and then to Japan for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, before returning to Washington on Nov. 14, a day before the start of Congress' lame-duck session.

___

Associated Press writer Ravi Nessman in New Delhi and AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller in Mumbai contributed to this report.

Why the economy's growth isn't easing unemployment By PAUL WISEMAN

From Associated Press
November 1, 2010

WASHINGTON – An economy growing 2 percent a year might be tolerable in normal times. Today, it's a near-disaster.

A growth rate of 5 percent or higher is needed to put a major dent in the nation's 9.6 percent unemployment rate. Two reasons why that's unlikely well into next year and maybe beyond:

• Construction — both residential and commercial — collapsed last year. And it isn't expected to regain its strength for years. Typically after recessions end, construction booms and powers a new economic expansion.

• The recession that began in December 2007, after the housing bubble burst, became the Great Recession once the financial crisis erupted in September 2008. Economic recoveries that follow a financial crisis are typically long-lasting. Banks usually take years to resume lending normally.

"To really get 'Morning in America' and get people feeling like jobs are really coming back, I would want to see something close to 5 percent" annual economic growth, says economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, referring to the iconic 1984 Reagan re-election ad.

That isn't likely to happen soon. Macroeconomic Advisers doesn't expect the labor market to recover all the lost jobs until at least 2013. Other economists say it could be 2018 or longer.

The government reported Friday that the nation's gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced, grew at an annual rate of 2 percent from July through September. GDP had risen at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter.

Economists say it takes GDP growth of 3 percent a year just to keep the unemployment rate from rising as more Americans reach working age and immigrants enter the country. It would take 2 additional percentage points of growth for a year to reduce the unemployment rate by 1 point.

Recoveries from deep recessions are usually robust. Once the recession of 1981-82 finally ended, the economy boomed in 1983 and 1984. During one stretch, GDP grew at an annual rate of 8 percent or more for four straight quarters. The economy generated 3.5 million jobs in 1983 and 3.9 million in 1984. The unemployment rate fell by a third in just two years, from 10.8 percent to 7.2 percent.

By contrast, since the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, the economy has lost a net 439,000 jobs. The unemployment rate was 9.5 percent in June last year. Now, it's 9.6 percent.

The 1981-82 recession started largely because former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker raised short-term interest rates as high as 20 percent in 1980 to purge double-digit inflation from the economy. Restarting the economic engine was simple: Volcker cut short-term rates in half within a year.

Low rates worked their magic and fired up the housing market. That created jobs for construction workers, expanded the market for building materials and spurred consumer demand for appliances and furniture. Emboldened, businesses borrowed, invested and hired.

But cutting interest rates is no longer an option. The financial crisis was so severe in the fall of 2008 that the Fed slashed short-term rates to zero by December to prevent another depression.

Long-term rates have fallen sharply, too. Today, consumers and businesses are unable or unwilling to take on more debt, and many banks are reluctant to lend. Bank lending has dropped in five of the past six quarters.

And the housing market, normally a driver of job growth, is still reeling. The National Association of Home Builders expects builders to put up 605,000 houses and apartments this year. That's down more than 70 percent from the 2.1 million in 2005 at the peak of the housing boom.

"We can hope for strong growth, but it is not happening," says economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors. "A robust recovery was never possible because the problems in the housing and financial sectors were not going to disappear overnight."

Weakness in the financial system slowed recoveries from the previous two recessions as well. The 1990-91 recession was caused by a credit crunch that followed the collapse of the savings and loan industry and of commercial banks in Texas and New England. The recovery that followed remained erratic until 1996.

A stock market collapse, caused by the bursting of a technology bubble, triggered a mild recession in 2001. That recovery started even more slowly than the 2009-2010 version. And it didn't replace all the jobs that had been lost for nearly four years.

The 2008 financial crisis was the most destructive of all, which helps explain why the economy has remained so weak since the recession ended.

"These last three recessions are associated with financial market distress, which kept traditional levers from working," Bivens says.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walks out of CNN interview

Sat Oct 23, 2:03 PM

Michael Bolen
Yahoo! Canada News

WikiLeaks stated goal is to bring information to light, but its founder, Julian Assange, doesn't always apply the principle to information about himself.

Assange walked out of an interview with CNN's Atika Shubert after she asked about internal problems at Wikileaks and his legal troubles in Sweden. The Scandinavian country issued a warrant for Assange on a rape charge in August but soon withdrew it. The investigation has now been reopened.

When Atika asked about the accusations, Assange stressed that the interview should focus on the 104,000 Iraqi civilians WikiLeaks says were killed over the course of the war there. Assange threatened to walk out if Atika continued to question him about his personal life and when she persisted he took off his microphone and walked of the set.