Archive for November 2008
Divorces — past and present — hit by economy
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/11/18/divorce.hard.times.ap/index.html
NEW YORK (AP) — Bonnie Rabin is fond of saying that divorce lawyers are a bit like liquor stores. They’re busiest in the really good times, and the really bad.
Attorney Bonnie Rabin says she’s had to renegotiate for clients who have suffered economic losses.
These, of course, would be the bad times.
After all, “Money is THE great source of stress in relationships,” says Rabin, one of five partners in a Manhattan matrimonial firm, who speaks with the quiet authority of someone who’s spent two decades speaking to troubled spouses. “You think it might be sex, or the kids. But no, it really comes down to money.”
And so it stands to reason that in such a dire time — when “virtually every day, I hear from a client who’s lost their job,” Rabin says — troubled relationships become more troubled. And once seemingly solid unions begin to fray. 
Watch kids want judge to force dad to divorce ยป
But that doesn’t mean everyone’s rushing to divorce court. It just means that every step of the process is more fraught, more complicated, more difficult. Breaking up in this economy, it seems, can be a lot harder to do.
Poverty, Pension Fears Drive Japan’s Elderly Citizens to Crime
By Stuart Biggs and Sachiko Sakamaki
Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — More senior citizens are picking pockets and shoplifting in Japan to cope with cuts in government welfare spending and rising health-care costs in a fast-ageing society.
Criminal offences by people 65 or older doubled to 48,605 in the five years to 2008, the most since police began compiling national statistics in 1978, a Ministry of Justice report said.
Theft is the most common crime of senior citizens, many of whom face declining health, low incomes and a sense of isolation, the report said. Elderly crime may increase in parallel with poverty rates as Japan enters another recession and the budget deficit makes it harder for the government to provide a safety net for people on the fringes of society.
“The elderly are turning to shoplifting as an increasing number of them lack assets and children to depend on,” Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor at Chuo University in Tokyo and an author of books on income disparity in Japan, said in an interview yesterday. “We won’t see the decline of elderly crimes as long as the income gap continues to rise.”
Crime rates among the elderly are rising as the overall rate for Japan has fallen for five consecutive years after peaking in 2002. Over 60s accounted for 18.9 percent of all crimes last year compared with 3.1 percent in 1978, with shoplifting accounting for 80 percent of the total, the report said.
The trend has captivated Japan’s media, which include regular accounts of the latest thief or pickpocket as well as undercover footage of people shoplifting food in convenience stores and supermarkets.
Martin Hennecke – US May Lose Its ‘AAA’ Rating
