Statistical Smoke and Mirrors

Many of us absorb news reports about the effects of the global recession, hoping to relate the details of those reports to our own individual realities. A little over a year ago, despite local and personal evidence to the contrary, Americans were being told that the economy was "strong" and showed no signs of weakening. We all now know that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, we were being misled.

Today we are seeing news stories suggesting that the recession is over, unemployment is declining and the housing market has bottomed out. My own personal reality says otherwise. I haven't been able to sell my house and I haven't been able to find a job, which causes me to question exactly how these things are really measured by "officials."

As an example, let's look a employment statistics. Comparing the number of new claims for Unemployment Insurance benefits in a given month to the number of new claims for UI benefits in the previous month can result in what looks like a reduction in unemployment. In fact, that seems to be the way the official unemployment numbers are being reported. But in reality, that only tells us that fewer new people showed up at the Unemployment Office this month compared to last month. What it doesn't tell us is probably a much better indicator of the health of the labor market -- under-employment.

In economics, the term underemployment has three different distinct meanings and applications. All meanings involve a situation in which a person is working, unlike unemployment, where a person who is searching for work cannot find a job.

Meaning 1: The employment of workers with high skill levels in low-wage jobs that do not require such abilities, for example a trained medical doctor who works as a taxi driver.

Meaning 2: "Involuntary part-time" workers -- workers who could (and would like to) be working for a full work-week but can only find part-time work.

Meaning 3: "Over staffing" or "hidden unemployment", the practice in which businesses employ workers who are not fully occupied---for example, workers currently not being used to produce goods or services due to legal or social restrictions or because the work is highly seasonal.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics does provide data that takes labor under-utilization into account. On the BLS website (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm) there appears a table that shows the labor statistics in a variety of iterations. For instance, the first row of the table shows "persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force," the most familiar to most readers. It shows that in September 2008 that percentage was 2.3 versus 5.3 in September 2009. When the data is adjusted for seasonal factors, those percentages went from 2.4 in September 2009 to 5.4 in September 2009, a small difference.

However, when the measure included "Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached* workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally employed workers," the seasonally adjusted figures went from 11.2 percent in September 2008 to a whopping 17.0 percent in September 2009! The term "marginally attached" is defined as persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.

In an October 26, 2009 news story in the San Francisco Chronicle, writer Tom Abate reports that California's already scary 12.2 percent unemployment figure becomes a terrifying 21.9 percent when adjusted for underemployment!

Credit Card Holders: Watch Your Back!

"Since passage of the Credit CARD Act, we found that credit card issuers have done little to remove practices deemed unfair or deceptive by the Federal Reserve," said Shelley A. Hearne, managing director of the Pew Health Group, which oversees the project. "In fact, some of the most harmful practices have actually grown more widespread-not one of the bank cards reviewed would meet the legal requirements outlined in the Credit CARD Act, which is bad news for consumers."

This quote was taken from a press release on PR Newswire. This story was being reported by Meredeth Viera of the Today Show when I was waking up this morning. Ms. Viera closed the segment with "Why am I not surprised?"

Are these big banks deliberately thumbing their noses at their customers by milking their ability to gouge credit card holders until the new Credit Card Act of 2009 becomes effective in February? Sure seems like it. The nation's largest banking institutions have been raising their interest rates without warning, resurrecting their old annual fees, charging more late charges and doing everything else they can think of to finish off the financially-injured consumer, while they still can. This is the thanks we, the taxpayers, get from the recipients of government bailouts?

I ran to my laptop, pulled up my credit card statement and saw the evidence in black and white.
There in my Recent Activity section was the entry: ONE-TIME MEMBERSHIP FEE! The entry was made on October 26, 2009 and the amount charged was $0.00. Phew!

You might think that I am relieved. Not at all. Today the amount charged might be zero, but they were thinking about it, weren't they? Why else would it suddenly appear?

Republican Hi-Jinks

For the past month or so I have been getting extremely frequent phone calls from someone with the following caller ID information: Unknown Name, Unknown Number. I don't even answer some calls that identify the caller, so there was no way I was going to answer these. Except they started coming in morning, noon and night and then every 30 minutes or so.

This morning I answered. "Is this {My Name}?" To which I replied in my most menacing tone of voice "Who's calling!?" "This is the Republican..." CLICK! I hung up.

Before these totally anonymous calls began, I was receiving the same volume of calls from NRSC with a Washington, DC area code. Googling NRSC, I discovered that these calls were from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This was a first! Never, ever, has anyone from the Republican Party approached me about anything. Did they really think that their relentless efforts to get me on the phone would increase their chances of getting a donation out of me? Resorting to telephone trickery, while typical of the tactics of the GOP, is a new low, even for them!

It is bad enough that the one exception to telemarketing to people on the Do Not Call list is political campaigns. The Democrats have also done their share of harassing me. But at least they never tried to hide their identity!

The Illusion of Democracy?

Yesterday I was in documentary film mode. Being a movie buff since childhood, I have only recently developed a taste for learning via documentary films. The first one I watched, called Who Killed the Electric Car?", delves into the short life of the GM EV1 electric car -- a fuel-efficient electric auto that was once all the rage in the mid-1990s and now has fallen by the roadside. GM developed the spiffy little sports-like car in answer to the California Air Resources Board mandate that all seven car manufacturers selling cars in the state would have to develop and market a zero-emission car. The filmmaker, Chris Paine, interviewed government officials, GM executives and several Hollywood celebrities lucky enough to have leased an EV1.

The second film was The U.S. vs John Lennon, about a slice of American history that I obviously lived through. This retrospective of the events of the Nixon, Johnson and Peacenik times chronicles our government's response to the former Beatle's anti-war activities from 1966 to 1976.

Conclusions:

1. The success of the Toyota Prius flies directly in the face of the geniuses at GM who, fueled by their overriding greed and their affair with the oil industry, determined that there was little demand for an electric car. The Prius was developed by Toyota at the same time as the GM EV1 and for the same reason.

2. Those of us who take literally the phrase "government of, by and for the people," owe a lot to the eccentric and brilliant John Lennon, who wasn't even an American, but who used his celebrity to help put the spotlight on the anti-war movement.

3. A handful of people who have been placed in critical positions within both government and big business have the ability to alter the fate of millions of unsuspecting Americans. That is simply terrifying.

Medicare Madness

So on November 1 I will officially become a Medicare recipient. I'll let you know in a few months whether I think that is good or not. But I wish I had a dollar for every page of "information" I have received about Medicare in the past six months! Since someone, somewhere wisely decided to make it illegal for insurance companies to use telemarketing for the purpose of hawking their Medigap programs, my mailbox began to fill up with unsolicited envelopes containing letters soliciting my request for them to send me information! You can reread that sentence -- I'll wait, because it may sound wrong, but it is exactly what happened. The aforementioned wise person apparently also made it illegal to just go ahead and mail the information without my prior permission.

About a month after all these insurance company mailings started arriving, the company from which I am retired with full benefits started sending random, legal-speak letters about things such as Assigned Coverage, Part B Premium Payment Assistance, and How to Sign up for Medicare (even though the company later signed me up themselves!) Every day that something new arrived, I became more and more confused. I had no idea what was about to happen.

THEN one day I received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying that based on my 2007 tax return, I would be required to pay an additional premium for Medicare Part B -- a little less than $40 would be added to the basic premium of little less than $100 per month!What a minute, 2007? I was laid off in 2009! Why should I pay extra now, when I have no job?!?
The SSA website was ready with an answer. If I had a "life-changing event" such as a "dramatic reduction in income," I would have to prove it and they would reconsider. A phone number was given to call to get this accomplished. I encountered the usual automated menu and pressed the number associated with Medicare. There was a recording which described what Medicare is -- period. There were no options for getting a customer service associate to take my information. Exasperated, I grabbed my documents and drove downtown to the public office.

THREE hours later, after being grudgingly interviewed by a surly government worker; after being assigned to a "specialist" because of the complexity of my mission; after explaining to the so-called specialist why her computer "wouldn't take the information;" after watching several citizens with hearing problems or intellectual issues be cruelly disrespected; I left not really knowing if i had accomplished anything, despite the fact that I was told I was "all set, but it wouldn't take effect until next year." What?!?!?!? Fortunately, something worked correctly; I received a letter less than 10 days later saying my premium was changed back to the basic.

Call me crazy, but I would think that, given the target audience of Medicare correspondence and processes, there would be an effort to simplify things for those of us who are heading into the autumn of our years. If this is any example of how well the government "runs" a 75-year-old program, let's give a whole lot more thought to the wisdom of a public option for healthcare insurance! And I will remind you that I am a Democrat -- a Democrat with sense enough to recognize a problem when I see one.

The Healthcare Debate

A conservative friend of mine (yes, I have two or three) told me earlier this week that he thinks President Obama is spending too much time on the healthcare issue and not enough on the economy. I was inclined to agree, not because I don't believe the American healthcare system is broken, but because so many Americans are just plain broke -- especially this American!

But yesterday I heard a story that made me think again. A couple with a young son decided to leave their respective corporate jobs to start their own small business. Of course that meant that they would give up their group health insurance, and that was factored into their decision. They knew they would have to buy health insurance independently.

Both Mom and Dad had had their share of medical challenges over the years, including multiple back surgeries, but they both qualified for their new insurance without a hitch. The toddler? He was denied coverage. Why? Because when the child was 2 years of age he developed the habit of pulling out the hairs from his eyebrows, which is sometimes a manifestation of an emotional disorder. The parents sought and received treatment for the child and the behavior stopped and has never returned. The insurance company denied coverage on the basis of a pre-existing condition!

News junkies like me know that just this past week there were two ridiculous stories in the news: One about a 4-month-old baby boy who was denied coverage for obesity at 17 pounds; and the other, about a 3-year-old girl who was denied coverage for being too small. The little girl had no underlying medical issue; she is not a person with dwarfism. She is just tiny. These were considered by the insurance companies involved to be pre-existing conditions.

What?!?!?

Conservatives have been screaming about the burdens small businesses are bearing in today's economy. Some of those same politicians appear to be absolutely opposed to healthcare reform. Guess which segment of the economy is being shut out of healthcare coverage on the basis of arbitrary and nonsensical decisions?

Social Networking Perks Me Up

Yesterday's melancholy post elicited concern from loved ones, so today is about fun.

Many seniors have the idea that Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are strictly the domains of young people. That's not true. Facebook has provided me with daily injections of happiness as I reconnect with people from as far back as high school, and stay in touch with people all over the globe. One of my fellow high school drum majorettes shared one day that her husband was buying her a puppy for her birthday. The next day, her birthday, we were formally introduced to said puppy via a photograph.

Another friend had been uncharcteristically quiet for some time and I was starting to worry that he might be ill. Then one day on Facebook I discovered a new picture album from him entitled "Special Lady." Aha, so that explained it!

Give it a try. There is no reason to feel lonely and isolated when there are all these tools for staying connected.

The Invisibility of Seniorhood

Being unemployed and single leaves a lot of time for me to think. Lately I have given a lot of thought to what has happened to my ego over the past 20 years.

Confidence has always been a strength for me. It was ingrained in me by my family from the instant I was born. God had given me unusual intelligence, they told me, and it was my duty to maximize that gift to the fullest. And so I strove to do so. Later, when the boys starting buzzing around, I was shocked to learn that they found me attractive. That little surprise was to become as valuable a gift as the intelligence would be. Sometimes the two "gifts" collided, because some men/boys seemed to prefer not to hear much from my brain. It got confusing.

Somehow, though, I figured out how to navigate the world and enjoy a life of achievement and recognition, both of which were very important to me.


Around age 45 I began to think of myself as a person at the top of my game but running out of time. The pressure to produce more, faster and better than everyone else, came from the workplace, yes; but it was also coming from inside me. Subconsciously, I think, I was feeling the pull of professional gravity -- the closing of that "window of opportunity" which appears on the career continuum. Now, looking back, I know that's exactly what it was.

Over the next 20 years, life happened. I grew older, shorter, thicker, too gray to keep up the hair color, more accident-prone. The mind stayed sharp, but the short-term memory faltered progressively. I retired early (age 55), started my own business, and set out to realize my dream of being my own boss. That sounded so great--until I tried it. I loved working on client projects, but absolutely hated the business part -- the quarterly taxes, the invoicing and bookkeeping, and worst of all, the hounding my clients for payment. I hightailed it back to a company with a staff!

10 years later, there are days when I don't speak a word to another human being because I don't leave the house and I communicate via email. I am totally uncomfortable with my matronly silhouette and the lack of attention from random men who seem not to even see me. Outwardly I believe I still appear to be highly confident, but inside my confidence is shaky at best.
And it is not because my birth gift, intellect, has diminished (except for that pesky short-term memory!) It's because of that "only skin-deep" quality that has never solved a puzzle, never invented a life-saving medical procedure, and never written a book. How absurd.

Dear Mr. President:

I was watching the Sunday morning talk shows today, and I decided the time had come for me to give you a piece of my mind. I know you are aware of how hard I worked to get you elected -- you keep sending me emails telling me how much you appreciate what I've done so far. Then you ask me to do something else. I'm cool with that. I understand the Saul Alinsky brand of community organization; I'm a Chicago girl. But Mr. President, I've gotta tell you: It's time for you to start delivering!

I heard Valerie Jarrett spout the litany of things you have accomplished since January, after she said one more time that "we have to remember the mess he inherited." Well, my birthday happens to be November 4, the same day all of us succeeded in sending you to the White House. So it's easy for me to remember that you have been at this for almost a year now. As you like to say, "Let me be clear:"

• I was laid off on February 28, 2009. I have been looking for a job ever since. I have even applied for some of the Federal jobs advertised under the Recovery Act. I have never had the courtesy of a reply from anything other than a computer. Where are the jobs you keep referring to? I read about programs in place to try to put seniors back into the work force, and at almost 65, I certainly could use some help landing a job. But I don't see any jobs listed under the programs.
• I put my home on the market on March 15, 2009. I discovered, to my shock and dismay, that the value of my house declined some $200,000 since the last time it was appraised in 2006. Not one offer came in before the listing expired in September.
• I have been talking to Wachovia Mortgage since March 2009, trying to get myself positioned with a loan modification so that I can avoid going into default. They are still not offering a loan modification under the Housing Affordability and Stability Plan you announced back in February 2009.
• I received my property tax bill two months late, because my county's tax commission couldn't figure out what to do about the loss in property values. Guess what they did. They raised my already exorbitant taxes another $400!
• Thankfully, I do receive Unemployment Insurance benefits for the time being. Soon they will run out. But I am paying income taxes on these payments! Why? How hard would it be to suspend income taxes on UI benefits, leaving us with a little more to try to survive on?

Mr. President, I understand that your plate is overflowing, what with Afghanistan, health care, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Wall Street Behaving Badly, and so on. But I'm sinking fast over here. When are you going to force these states and municipalities who are receiving all this stimulus money to pass it on to those of us who are paying for it?

Talk is cheap, Mr. President, and frankly, I'm having a hard time defending you and your policies when all my family members and friends are losing everything they have worked for all their lives. Please do whatever you have to do to start producing some results. I'm on your side, so I can imagine how frustrated those who aren't must feel. Can we count on you?

GRRRRRRRRRRR!

Yesterday was not a good day. I want to tell you about it, but it is so convoluted, circular and crazy, I don't know how to begin. It all began back in March 2009 after I was laid off. I knew I was going to run into problems paying my mortgage if I didn't find another job, and I also knew that at age 64 I was probably going to have a hard time finding one.

So I called Wachovia Mortgage and started the conversation about what to do to avoid going into default and eventual foreclosure. I knew to do that because I am a political news junkie. I knew every component of President Obama's Home Affordability and Stability Plan, and I knew I qualified for a loan modification under HASP. Turns out I knew way more about it than did any of the people I would eventually talk to at Wachovia Mortgage. More on that on another day.

Yesterday's issue stemmed from an observation I made on my credit report. Because I have a credit monitoring service that notifies me whenever something changes on my credit report, I was aware that there had been two "hard inquiries" -- one in August 2009 and one in October 2009. Both inquiries were made by RELS Credit Service on behalf of Wells Fargo Bank. Each of these inquiries occurred exactly one day after I had spoken to someone in Wachovia Mortgages Loan Counseling department. Also relevant is the fact that Wachovia Mortgage had been purchased by Wells Fargo Bank and the merge of the two entities was in progress. I figured these inquiries had something to do with my "talks" with Wachovia, but the reason I was concerned is that my credit score was immediately lowered each time they hit.

Back in August, when the first one hit my credit report, I called the bank and asked why there was an unauthorized credit report pulled. They denied having done it, insisted that they never do that without my permission, and suggested I contact the company that made the inquiry. Made sense, right? Problem was that RELS Credit doesn't seem to want to be contacted, because there is no phone number listed in their contact information on the credit report. I Googled the company and found a number of blogs complaining about unauthorized credit report inquiries from RELS Credit. I then checked the Better Business Bureau and found that they were not members and carried a B- rating. Hmmm.

When it happened again on October 2, I assumed it was the result of the Forebearance Agreement I had signed with Wachovia, which was an interim solution while we waited for Wachovia Mortgage to get their act together on their government-mandated Loan Modification program. (I had been given two prior dates by which Wachovia Mortgage would have that program up and running -- both dates slipped. Now they won't state a date -- just that they MUST have it up and running by the end of the year!) But I must have had too much time on my hands yesterday, because the fact that my credit score had dropped 15 points as a direct result of these inquiries suddenly bugged the heck out of me. So I started up again.

Let's just say that, after two hours, calls to both RELS Credit and Wachovia Mortgage (yes, I did find a phone number for RELS Credit on the Better Business Bureau website) and finally screaming at a very rude and sarcastic so-called supervisor at Wachovia Mortgage Loan Counseling after having been transferred five different times and having to start from the beginning each time (what's your name, what are the last 4 digits of your Social Security number, can we call you on your cell phone, etc., etc., etc.) I am in the exact same place I was two hours before -- nowhere.

So, I filed a formal complaint with the Better Business Bureau!

Seniors: Beware of FreeCreditReport.com

We are all being reminded daily how important our credit scores can be when we go out to buy something requiring credit. Be very wary of the so-called "free" credit monitoring services -- they ARE NOT FREE!

Case in point: FreeCreditReport.com advertises on TV and all over the internet, convincing you that you can pull your credit report and credit score at will. Hidden in the print too small for most seniors to see without high magnification is the fact that by pulling the "free" credit report you are signing up for a monthly credit monitoring service. If you are dilligent about checking your credit card statements (and you must be!) you will suddenly notice a charge of $14.95 or something similar. This website, owned and operated by the credit bureau Experian, counts on the likelihood that you will either not notice the charge at all, or simply tell yourself when you first see it that you probably did order it and just forgot about it.

If you think you need a credit monitoring service, make sure you are getting one you actually want -- not one you have been duped into buying.

Welcome to My Blog

If you have landed on my blog space, you undoubtedly have searched to find some perspective on the effect the recession is having on seniors in the United States. Lots has happened to me since January 2009. I have been disappointed a lot, frightened, exasperated and, at times, humored.

Never in my wildest nightmares did I expect to be in this predicament on the eve of my 65th birthday. I retired once in 2000, but became both bored and apprehensive. Bored because there is only so much daytime TV one can take. Besides, I missed the sense of purpose I had taken for granted during my career. Apprehensive because the way money was flying out of my retirement account, I realized it might not last long enough. The women in my family have impressive longevity -- my grandmother passed away in 2006 at age 98! My mother is 85. I could be living for quite a while longer.

So I went to work. I had a great job that allowed me to work at home, apply all the skills I had amassed in my 30 years of working, and make a decent salary. I was laid off in February 2009 and have been looking for a new job ever since.

Join me each day to see if I have learned anything new that you might find helpful. If not, I will post my current thoughts, small victories, etc.