Oh, now you show up.

Day 582

Well, that didn't take long. The Jackson family has moved to take control of the late Michael Jackson's assets. Specifically, it took five days.

So my big question: Where were parents Katherine and Joseph, in court yesterday to assert control of their son's estate, during the past 15-plus years of their son's mental and physical decline? Where were Jermaine, Janet and Michael's many other siblings? Where were record-label executives, concert promoters, arena owners and the entire legion for whom Michael Jackson generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue - indeed, revived a stagnant music industry, circa 1983? 

It's that same question I ask about Richard Carpenter and his mom as Karen Carpenter spiralled downward. (She had come home to her mother's house, and died in her childhood bedroom; wasn't that some kind of cry for help?) It's the same question I ask about Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse. Don't these folks have loving family and friends to help them take back control of their obviously troubled lives?

Forty years after Judy Garland's death, have we not learned the need for intervention?   

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.