Recession

The shaky economy is rattling the summer music festival. In the months leading up to the Southland's premier concert event, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival -- which kicks off its 10th edition in Indio today with performances by such pop luminaries as Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen -- recession-era fiscal realities have led to a string of cancellations by respected festivals. Florida's Langerado Music Festival was canceled because of poor ticket sales.

The Eurozone is back in a recession, its first in three years, as gross domestic product for the debt-plagued 17-nation bloc contracted 0.1% in the third quarter from the earlier quarter. In the second quarter, the currency collective tightened 0.2%, according to the official European Union statistics agency, Eurostat . Two consecutive quarterly slips make a recession. Compared with a year earlier, GDP is down 0.6%. Eurostat said last month that unemployment in the bloc was at a record high of 11.6% . Protests and strikes rippled across Europe on Wednesday.

President Bush thinks that the cause of recession is the lack of consumer confidence, not the lack of consumer money. I find that depressing. VIRGINIA MARTIN, Desert Hot Springs

If we have the Great Depression to thank for inventions such as the Twinkie, Monopoly and the photocopier, this recession may be remembered for inspiring a biodegradable shower mat, a tie that holds iPods and a gadget that breaks the vacuum seals of jars. That's because some self-starters among the ranks of the unemployed, sick of trudging off to job fairs and sending out resumes, are starting businesses to finally launch that invention they've been mulling over for years.

In 2008, the median household income in the United States plummeted 3.6% from the year before, and the percentage of people living in poverty soared to an 11-year high, recently released U.S. Census data reveal. Economists say the bleak news -- which they blame on the slew of layoffs that have accompanied the economic downturn -- is significant, if not entirely surprising. "The current recession has eliminated the gains that have been made in the last 10 years or so," said Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA.

Mayor Dave Munson drove past acres of chopped-up prairie and pointed matter-of-factly at signs of economic health that are hard to come by in most of the country. "This is going to be a very strong retail center," he said, waving at one graded lot where a Target store is to be built. He gestured at the other side of the road. "There's another development." A few years ago, many cities were pocked with freshly overturned dirt soon to be retail or residential developments.

The level of optimism among Americans about traveling has risen beyond pre-recession levels, according to a new survey of 2,300 travelers. The so-called Travel Sentiment Index may help predict how much Americans plan to travel for vacation this summer, according to the survey by the marketing services firm MMGY Global. The survey asked travelers their attitude about travel, the affordability of travel, finances available for travel and the safety of travel, among other factors.

Rates of abusive head trauma in children under age 5 rose during the last recession, suggesting that economic woes may have led parents to lash out against their kids, researchers reported Monday in the journal Pediatrics. The data also suggest that physicians today may want to be extra vigilant for signs of child abuse as economic conditions remain in the doldrums, the team wrote. The notion that economic hardship leads to increases in child abuse is not new -- scientific research and anecdotal reports have long shown a relationship.  For example, the Los Angeles Times reported during the recession in 1994 about increases in child abuse and neglect in Los Angeles County.  In recent years, the co-authors noted in the Pediatrics study, articles in the popular press including this one and this one have again stoked concerns that abuse was on the rise as the economy worsened.