Clarion Content

The Clarion Content published a post a while back in the Politics section, titled "Juxtaposition." If you didn't get a chance to read it, the idea was about the juxtaposition of two news items, the positive press releases out of a meeting of the Finance Ministers of the G8 and the massive bankruptcy of the United States theme park operator Six Flags. The reality of what has gone on in the world economy has been hard to see. The phrase the "worst economic times since the Great Depression" has been bandied about in the media. Are the optimistic comments of the state correct or merely meant to assuage fears stoked by the media? What is really happening?

When asking about the economy, the story that the Clarion Content's staffers hear most commonly in anecdotal citations is the local car dealership. Ask any American from almost any region of the country and they know of some car dealerships that have closed in their area. They don't yet know what to make of it. They usually also say that they personally know folks whose savings and home values have taken a hit, maybe even a big hit. It is less likely that they know someone who has been laid off.

It is our view that the underlying dislocations of the massive wobble in the world economy are still working their way through the globally connected supply chain. If it is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, then there will be regions and areas that are hit extremely hard. The Clarion Content ran into perhaps one such example in the San Francisco Chronicle the other day. Mendota is a town in Fresno County, California.

The unemployment rate in Mendota is 38.5%. 42% of residents live below poverty level. According to the Chronicle it is, "a desperate place where mothers wash disposable diapers for reuse, children are sleeping in cars, and the unemployed trudge door to door to beg for food."

Mendota was first hit by the ending of the new construction boom. The resulting local joblessness combined with farming water shortages to deal the town a series of cascading blows that have snowballed. Again according to the Chronicle, "More than 2,000 people moved out of town in the past two years, and the loss of both residents and workers able to buy goods sent sales of everything from chain saws to groceries plummeting." The Spreckles sugar plant on the edge of town closed. A furniture store and several restaurants shut down. The main bank has announced that it will close soon.

Read the whole article here, it could have been cut directly from the pages of the the Grapes of Wrath.

Labels: Economy