Economy

Jen Lynch and her family live in the heart of the city but roll out of bed to the sound of clucking chickens. Their day starts with cleaning coops, scooping out feed and hunting for eggs for morning omelets. Eight families in a three-block radius and an estimated 150 families citywide do the same. "It's our slice of rural life, minus the barns," said Jen Lynch, 35, as Flicka the chicken pecked at her backyard lawn.

When Gilbert Cates tries to explain the hard times facing the Geffen Playhouse, he turns to an analogy from his long experience as a film director and producer of television shows, including the annual Academy Awards telecast. Whenever studio heads talk about cutting the budget for one of his movie projects, Cates compares it to trimming an airplane. Sure, you can take a little off the wheel, a little off the engine, a little off the wing, he tells them.

Happy hour is getting happier, and that's making restaurants sadder. As the recession drags on, drinkers such as Luis Romero of Anaheim are gravitating to happy hour -- that late-afternoon period when bars and restaurants sell discounted drinks and food to attract customers during what otherwise would be a slow time. "You start watching your pennies a bit more," said Romero as he sipped a $3.

The financial crisis that has sent economies reeling the world over is finally seeping into Iraq, with potentially grave implications for the stability of the country. Car sales have plummeted. The once-booming property market has skidded to a halt. Electronic goods that were flying off the shelves a few months back are staying put. And in a country still threatened by an insurgency, more than a quarter of men ages 18 to 29 are unemployed.

Not since Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt has a president moved to expand the role of government so much on so many fronts -- and with such a demanding sense of urgency. The scope of President Obama's ambition was laid bare in the budget blueprint issued Thursday. The budget would account for 24.

With Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton beginning a tour of Asia this week in Tokyo, Japan's economy is suffering from its worst downturn in 35 years, and its prime minister is hanging by his nails to keep his job. Japan's economy, the second-largest in the world after that of the United States, shrank at an annual rate of 12.7% in the final three months of last year, the government said Monday.

Four years ago, Andrew Meeks literally bet the farm on chickens. Now he fears he made a losing bet. His three massive chicken houses are empty, and a "For Sale" sign has sprouted out front. Meeks, a contract chicken farmer, borrowed nearly half a million dollars to refurbish his 25-acre farm, putting up as collateral his home, the farm and virtually everything else he owns. But the company that provided his chickens and paid him to raise the birds canceled his contract.

California shed 66,500 jobs in June, and more losses loom as double-digit unemployment spreads to state and local governments, once reliable bastions of employment security. June's 11.6% unemployment rate is a post-World War II record. Professional services, construction and trade continue to top the state's jobless categories. But in a troubling sign, governments -- a stable part of the state's economy for a decade -- have been laying off thousands of workers in recent months.

For years, retailers could afford to be sloppy about running their businesses because customers kept buying. No more. Stung by the worry that shoppers -- who cut spending by the most dramatic amount in at least 39 years this holiday season -- may not start spending again for a long time, stores are making drastic changes.

Mexico will postpone construction of its planned Punta Colonet port on the Pacific Coast and may scrap the project entirely as interested bidders struggle to find financing for the $4.88-billion complex. The first simultaneous recession in the U.S., Japan and Europe since World War II has led to a 30% drop in port traffic on the U.S.