Last night as I was returning home from the gym, I saw four helicopters hovering in the air a mile or two south. I got inside, turned on the news, and, of course it was a car chase. Relatively predictable for Los Angeles, really — we’ve had five in the past few days.

But here’s what makes it really, really awful:

A businessman [later identified as Mustafa Mustafa] who led police on a more than three-hour chase in a luxury Bentley sedan shot himself to death early today after more than a dozen police cruisers surrounded his halted vehicle near Universal City, a source close to the Los Angeles Police Department said.

The reason? His business tanked and he couldn’t go on. This, along with a slew of other recession-related suicides remind me a lot of stock brokers jumping out of buildings in October 1929:

German billionaire industrialist Adolf Merckle lay down in front of a train after huge investment losses threatened his family’s business empire. Chicago real-estate mogul Steven Good shot and killed himself in the driver’s seat of his Jaguar after the property-auction business turned sour. René -Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet lost $1.4 billion to Bernie Madoff, went to work, took sleeping pills and slit his wrist.

It makes me wonder whether there could have been help for this man and many of these other people financially. Or, is this a predictor of more horribleness  to come?

Sooner or later, there might be more regular people who take their lives — those who don’t even make enough to live paycheck-to-paycheck. They can’t feed and clothe their own children. They don’t know how they will scrounge up the cash to pony up for another month of rent.

OK, officially depressed now….

I know it’s only been a few weeks, but don’t you miss G-Dubbs? Oh, the hilarious press conferences, the ridiculous faces, the other heads of state hating on our cowboy president…

But wait! You too can score some of your very own GOP-licensed George W. Bush commemorative gear!

For when the gas company shuts off your heat because you couldn’t make your payment, pull on this George W. Bush sweatshirt! The 43 is ironically placed on the left breast of this 100% cotton gem, available in heather grey.

Just see your 401K statement? Want to jump off a cliff? Well, don’t cut the bungee cord just yet. Invite three of your closest country club chums over for a nice stiff brandy, served out of this crystal decanter and set of tumblers. A steal at $199.99.

Want to thank your president in bumper sticker form, now that, well, our soundbites and thought processes have reduced to quippy, snarky witticisms that can only be said in bumper sticker form?! Well, send a big old thanks to 43 with this understated expression. Add it next to your fading W 2004 sticker on the back of your Ford F-150, and you’re good to go!

Thanks to the George W. Bush store for their items…do they know that they’re being ironic?

Photo by duchamp

Here’s a tally of the bloodbath that took place yesterday and the week before. On Monday alone, apparently 65,000 jobs were cut in the U.S. and around the world. Not good times:

Home Depot: 7,000 jobs and 34 stores (major indicator of real estate market, and new homes)

Caterpillar: 20,000 jobs (major indicator of all construction and development)

Texas Instruments: 3,400 jobs (all those poor 11th graders…)

Microsoft: 5,000 (their first job cut ever)

Target: 1,500 workers

Boeing: 10,000 jobs lost projected in 2009

Corning: 3,500 workers

Starbucks: 7,000 jobs and 300 stores (there were too many anyway — there are three Starbucks in my neighborhood, all within walking distance!)

DuPont: 4,000 contractors and 2,500 jobs

Phillips: 6,000 jobs

AOL: 700 jobs (wait — who still uses AOL other than my mom?)

ING Group: 7,000 workers

Sony/Erickson: 5,000 jobs

Pfizer: 19,500 jobs (thanks in part to a merger with Wyeth)

Harley Davidson: 1,000

Sprint/Nextel: 8,000

If it’s any consolation, McDonald’s profits are up 80%… I guess people are all over that damn dollar menu.

(Sources here and here)

Photo by Cliff1066

Former President George H.W. Bush on our current economic status:

My friends, we are not the sum of our possessions. They are not the measure of our lives. In our hearts we know what matters. We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it. What do we want the men and women who work with us to say when we are no longer there? That we were more driven to succeed than anyone around us? Or that we stopped to ask if a sick child had gotten better, and stayed a moment there to trade a word of friendship?

Well said, old man. Very Mr. Rodgers-like.

So President-elect Obama is set to name his economic team this morning. A lot of the names are a relatively inside baseball, but perhaps you may remember one familiar guy: Lawrence “women-suck-at-science” Summers.

Summers was Harvard’s 27th president, and during his tenure, he never strayed too far from controversy. At the Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce in January 2005, Summers said the reason there weren’t as many women in major science and engineering positions was because of different innate abilities that enable men to be better scientists than women. He also cited discrimination and that men are more willing to commit to the time demands.

He was also a vocal critic of African-American studies, particularly professor Cornel West. He claimed that West missed too many classes, contributed to grade inflation, and neglected serious scholarship. West later called Sumers “uninformed” and “an unprincipled power player” in is 2004 book, and left his post at Harvard to return to Princeton.

So basically, he’s kind of a tool, but he fortunately won’t be the face (or true voice) of the economic team. Summers, who was Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, will be the head of Obama’s National Economic Council, so his job will deal with a lot of policy making, not a lot of talking.

Photo by Robyn Gallagher

President Bush signed a bill on Monday creating a cabinet level position known as an IP Czar, whose main job is to enforce stricter punishments for copyright infringement, music and movie piracy. Basically, the IP (Intellectual Property) Czar was established to work with the Justice Department and the FBI to fight intellectual property crimes.

But this leaves me with a couple of questions for the government: Does this mean I can’t make a mix CD for my sister without the FBI landing on my doorstep?

And will this law protect the small-time YouTube star, or college student pitching a show idea to big companies like General Electric, or Viacom without an agent, or manager, or attorney? I personally know more than one occasion, in which someone is invited up to the MTV suites, pitches their idea, is turned away by executives, and then sees a shitty clone version of their idea splayed all over advertisements during MTV’s next season wedged between Date My Grandma and The Rich A-Hole Show on Monday nights.

Tech Crunch says that this new law is on track to kill new forms of creative media and free speech taking place online… like mashups involving copyrighted music, television, film, and other media, or leaked Britney Spears videos…

And while the Justice Department opposed the bill, written by Senator Patrick Leahy, there was enough support from Congress for the bill to pass. Leahy said it was one of the most important pieces of legislation he had ever written, and that protecting IP was essential to the country’s economic health. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 40 percent of the nation’s economic growth comes from intellectual property, including music, movies, pharmaceuticals, fashion and software. Both the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are thrilled, of course. MPAA head Dan Glickman said “piracy of music and movies is becoming increasingly more sophisticated, and in many cases involves organized-crime type of syndicates that are often worldwide,” according to National Public Radio. Apparently the entertainment industry is losing billions of dollars annually for piracy.

What I want to know is why this is just now happening? If the entertainment industry, and the U.S. government really cared about what was going on, this would have happened 7 years ago at the latest. Napster was created 10 years ago, launching a revolution of file sharing — why would a teenager with minimal income purchase a $20 CD when he or she could have it for free?

And will this IP Czar work additionally with the CIA to work on international cases? Think of the immense amount of organized crim going on in Asia, pertaining to music and film piracy. Or are we too financially attached to China to even dare enforce our laws upon them? A report in February says that China, Russia, and Canada are the biggest violators of U.S. copyright law.