The XX Factor

Recession Briefing 9.14

Goodwill stores - which might have been a wardrobe faux pas in better times - are seeing a recession-fueled boost in sales. ( Boston Herald )

Basic salaries for executives at top companies jumped 10 percent last year despite the financial crisis , a report said on Monday. ( Agence France-Presse )

There is a surge in student interest at the nation’s schools that provide an education in the business and science of funerals , a field that historically garners greater interest as the job market worsens. ( Associated Press )

Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad draw attention to the fact that blacks are the ones who are taking the brunt of the recession, with disproportionately high levels of foreclosures and unemployment. ( New York Times )

Morris Dickstein’s new book looks at what the Great Depression did to culture. ( The New Yorker )

Do governments and central banks deserve credit for preventing catastrophe? The early verdict from most scholars, executives and government insiders is yes. ( Wall Street Journal )

Lehman’s failure marked a beginning rather than an end, and triggered a series of events that affected economies around the world to a much greater degree than the other failures did. ( The Big Money )

The recession has come to the Great White Way. Broadway theater attendance plummeted this summer by 9.3% compared with last year. ( New York Daily News )

Ryan Sager asks, how will this “depression generation” be shaped by the current economic crisis? ( True/Slant )

Tight financial times may have a lasting effect on California’s home buyers and alter the state’s real estate landscape. ( Los Angeles Times )