Stories and Pictures from the Great Recession

Is She Being Served?

For example, we all know that men could survive entirely on pizzas and ribs forever. But that would kill most of the restaurant industry. My wife, on the other hand, likes to be taken out to dinner. She likes napkins made out of cloth and candles and waiters who pamper her like I never do. That’s why the National Restaurant Assn.’s Restaurant Performance Index is a key indicator. This monthly statistical barometer, based on a survey of restaurateurs nationwide, tracks the health of the restaurant industry using factors like same-store sales and customer traffic. Happily, this index has been on the rise since midsummer. A decline in this index means our wives are asking us to take them out to dinner… less. Yikes! Now, this is a big sacrifice for most women, so to do this they must know something about the economy that men don’t. Business owners should stop and ponder that before making any significant investments.



I might also post portions of the paper, little fledglings leaving the nest, just to see if they can actually fly.

Some may see this financial time as a sort of reckoning for Americans. A type of “this is what you get” mentality, suited to the image of the McDonald’s eating, McMansion living, mall shopping stereotype which has sadly become a normalized representation of people from the United States. That somehow, like the tower of Babel, we built this disaster and it is our lot to watch it fall, and get ready to bear the consequences. We wanted bigger houses, in more suburban locations, and as the realtors took their gambles and built their now vacant properties, something else was in the works for those perhaps risking too much. There is a lot of finger-pointing in the media, who is to blame for this mess, which inversely asks, who is not to blame? This portion of the paper will examine three factors, how are Americans being depicted in the media; victim or perpetrator, glutton or saint? Secondly, how has the American government wielded its power to blame and to save Wall Street? And finally, in the media landscape, can we understand, and will there be an archive, of what has happened, if it has happened yet?