The Irish Independent reports that large parts of the country at risk of flooding could become uninsurable in the future because of soaring premiums.
Insurance companies expect to pay out up to €400m to flood victims, and this will push up the cost of house and motor insurance for everyone.
So far, up to 1,700 people have been evacuated from their homes, with up to 600 houses and apartments abandoned because of rising flood waters.
Five thousand local authority workers, 600 defence forces staff and 350 civil defence officials were on duty at the peak of the floods last week, with homeowners in Carlow, Clare, Cork, Galway, Kildare, Leitrim, Limerick, Roscommon, Tipperary and Westmeath affected.
Industry sources last night warned that some homeowners would not be able to get insurance or would not be able to afford it.
"The re-insurance companies will come into play,"one said. "They will look at the flooding, which will lead to increases, and they will be more aggressive with their premiums. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that some areas could become uninsurable. It's not that insurers will set out to make it unaffordable, it's that increases will probably come into play. What the scale of those increases will be depends on the risk and what the re-insurers do."
Another added: "Some parts of the country are uninsurable. There are parts of the country where you won't get flood damage cover. It's going to be tough for the insurer, and for the consumer."
The cost of rebuilding the country after the devastating floods of the past week is set to reach up to €800m.
Last night, the country's biggest insurance company, Hibernian Aviva, estimated that the cost of flooding damage to homes and businesses around the country may exceed €250m.
But industry sources said the bill was more likely to reach €400m, and that the cost of repairing or replacing expensive infrastructure such as roads, bridges and railway lines, paying for accommodating hundreds of people left homeless and meeting the overtime bill for emergency services workers could double that estimate.
"The Irish Insurance Federation has said the flood claims from last August came to €100m. That's going to be well exceeded," one source said.
"Until the water abates and you can do a full assessment you don't know. It will be two to three weeks before a real assessment can be done. Certainly, it will be more than €150m, and the thinking at the moment is it could be €200m plus. It could reach €300m-€400m, it's possible. Land doesn't matter -- it's uninsurable. It's the properties. The longer water is there, the more damage is caused."
Subside
In further bad news to homeowners, it emerged that it could take three weeks for flood waters to subside in some of the worst-hit areas.
Chairman of the Emergency Response Co-ordination Committee Sean Hogan said he was "concerned" about extreme high tides forecast for the next few days and said if there were gale force winds, the Shannon Estuary could be affected.
He said this could cause the water to be driven up the estuary towards Limerick city, adding that it could take up to three weeks for waters to subside in Co Westmeath.
Environment Minister John Gormley said that some discussions had taken place about securing EU assistance to help pay the bill, but they were at an early stage.
The European Union Solidarity Fund was set up to respond to natural disasters and member states can apply for funding if the cost of the damage caused exceeds 0.6pc of the country's gross national income.
For the threshold to be reached, the eventual bill would have to be more than €800m. The money can be used for the restoration of infrastructure, including power plants, drinking water treatment plants, roads, schools and hospitals.
The Irish Independent also reports that Bord Gais is in exclusive talks to acquire the windfarm assets of SWS, the Cork-based energy and business services group, with some sources indicating that bidding topped the €500m mark.
SWS's wind energy division comprises 180 megawatts (MW) of operational farms around the island of Ireland and a 400MW development pipeline.
It is 40pc owned by Dublin-based boutique investment firm Ion Equity. Some 35pc of the business is held by private investors assembled by Anglo Irish Bank a few years ago, with an additional 17pc in the hands of the nationalised bank.
A group of company managers headed by Tim Cowhig, owns the remaining 8pc.
Any deal would also include €225m of debt attached to various wind projects.
Sources close to the auction said other interested parties were waiting in the wings should a Bord Gais deal fall through.
It is understood that one of the potential private equity suitors has pitched an alternative option of acquiring the half of the business owned by Anglo and its clients, who may be under more pressure to sell.
Bord Gais, which entered the residential electricity market last February, has already outlined plans to invest €1.2bn in wind energy projects over the next five years as it continues to diversify from its core business.
Earlier this year, the Dail approved a hike in the semi-state body's statutory borrowing limit from €1.7bn to €3bn.
Approval
Still, the company must have any acquisitions approved by both Energy Minister Eamon Ryan and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan.
Bord Gais would have to give both ministers a compelling reason why it plans to pay a price in excess of a bid arrived at by fellow semi-state ESB, which dropped out of the auction a number of months ago.
Back in September, it appeared that Ion Equity was ready to sell just the 180MW of assets that are up and running, which were projected to turn in €35m of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) next year.
The proceeds would have enabled SWS to continue to invest in its pipeline portfolio, but it now looks likely that the whole business will be sold.
The entire SWS Group was acquired in late 2006 for €110m by Ion Equity from a collection of Munster agricultural co-ops.
SWS's natural resources division was spun out in 2007, paving the way for a €104m equity and debt fundraising, which brought Anglo and its clients on board.
The Irish Times reports that trade unions last night remained hopeful that a deal on reducing the public sector pay bill for next year could be reached.
Government sources, however, continued to be sceptical of the actual levels of savings proposed that a compulsory unpaid leave arrangement for State employees would realise.
Separately, it is understood that health service management has signalled that intensive planning and significant change would have to be introduced across a range of areas if the proposals put forward by the trade unions in this sector were to be implemented successfully.
As part of a plan to avoid across- the-board cuts in pay levels, public sector unions have suggested that, as a temporary measure next year, civil and public servants should take between 10 and 14 unpaid leave days.
If there is no agreement on a deal between unions and the Government on how to produce €1.3 billion in savings for next year, civil and public servants are scheduled to stage a further 24-hour stoppage on Thursday. This would again close schools and seriously disrupt health and other public services.
The trade unions have estimated that the plan for unpaid leave would generate about €800 million in savings next year.
However, sources close to the Government last night estimated that when staff who, for operational and service reasons, could not take such unpaid leave were taken into account, the level of savings that would be generated would be in the region of €300 million.
This suggestion has been strongly disputed by senior union sources.
Trade union leaders and top health service officials, including the secretary general of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan, and the HSE’s director of human resources Seán McGrath, spent several hours on Sunday night and throughout yesterday testing the unpaid leave proposal in the health service.
This is the area in which the largest number of staff in the public service are employed.
However, it is understood that health service management signalled in the talks that if the plan were to be put in place, it would require a fundamental change to the way that work was carried was carried out.
This would include provision for redeploying staff, service reconfiguration, as well as alterations to existing reporting relationships and staffing ratios.
Sources said that in effect, management said that the union plan needed to be more ambitious.
Under the unions’ proposal the temporary unpaid leave arrangement – which could reduce earnings by 2 per cent for every five days taken – would be rescinded in future years as savings generated by means of an overall transformation programme in the public service came on stream.
This transformation programme would seek to produce significant savings by means of job reductions, new work practices and improved productivity.
In the absence of any deal, the Government is expected to announce cuts in public sector pay in the Budget next week.
The Irish Times also reports that Bank of Ireland and AIB face losses totalling up to €12 billion on the property loans that they will be handing over to the State rescue agency Nama, according to statements issued by both yesterday.
The Republic’s two biggest banks also warned their shareholders that if they do not vote in favour of taking part in the scheme both will ultimately face the prospect of nationalisation.
The two banks yesterday outlined what their participation in Nama, the State agency established to take over banks’ property loans, will entail.
AIB estimates that Nama will acquire land and development loans from it with a total value of €24.2 billion. It pointed out that the Minister for Finance has already estimated that the agency will buy the loans at a 30 per cent discount to their value.
The bank added that there was no reason to believe that the discount that would apply to its assets “will fall significantly outside this guidance”.
Similarly, Bank of Ireland estimated that it would be transferring loans worth €16 billion to the agency and would receive approximately €11.2 billion in return.
It stated that the 30 per cent discount“represents the maximum loss likely to be incurred on the sale of loans to Nama”.
On the basis of both their statements, AIB expects to lose €7.3 billion on its Nama loans, while Bank of Ireland believes that its losses will be a maximum of €4.8 billion.
Bank of Ireland pointed out that it wrote €1.4 billion off the value of the loans involved at the end of the first half of its financial year on September 30th.
It added that, as a result, it will have to account for a further €3.4 billion losses before tax, and said that it may have to do this over a number of accounting periods, depending on how quickly Nama does its work.
AIB wrote €2.3 billion off the value of its loans at its half-year stage on June 30th.
The bank did not go into any detail about recognising further losses.
The potential losses indicated by both statements are higher than those indicated by both banks at the time that the Nama legislation was published in September.
Bank of Ireland said then that on the basis of a number of measurements, it expected its write down to be less than the 30 per cent estimated by the Minister.
AIB also said in a statement that it expected its discount to be less than the predicted 30 per cent.
Yesterday, a Bank of Ireland spokesman pointed out that when the institution made its statement in September it also made it clear that the final figure would depend on Nama’s final estimate of its assets’ value.
He explained that the bank used a number of measurements, including total loan value and interest roll-ups, to supports its original statement.
Both banks’ share prices fell by more than 5 per cent yesterday as investors reacted to their statements by selling their stock.
The deeper the discounts paid by Nama, the more likely it is that they will have to receive aid in the form of taxpayers’ money to keep going.
It could also mean that the Government could be forced to convert its preference shares in both banks to ordinary stock.
The Department of Finance last night confirmed that this was being considered should the financial institutions require any further capital after Nama has done its work.
The banks will have to hold general meetings to get shareholders’ approval to take part in Nama and dispose of their property loans.
The two institutions warned that if shareholders vote against their taking part in Nama this would make it increasingly difficult for them to raise capital.
They said this could in turn force their partial or total nationalisation.
The Irish Examiner reports that ICOS, the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society, has called on Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith to protect and maintain the national suckler cow welfare scheme and disadvantaged area payments in the forthcoming budget.
It said the objectives of the suckler scheme are to improve welfare standards for animals and to improve the overall genetic quality and performance of the national suckler herd.
ICOS said that from an economic perspective, the disadvantaged areas scheme is particularly significant, contributing to the support of more than 100,000 Irish farm families, whose ability to farm is restricted by the physical environment including the impact of the wet, cold climatic conditions in Ireland.
Michael Spellman, ICOS Marts Committee chairman, said both schemes have a significant role to play in the promotion of Ireland’s indigenous food industry and our international reputation as the quality food island.
"Over 50% of all Irish cattle are currently derived from the beef suckler herd. About 55,000 farmers are involved in the suckler cow welfare representing some 750,000 cows.
"This has resulted in major strides forward in terms of welfare, performance, quality and a reduction in diseases and treatments.
"Livestock marts, live exports, consumers and the reputation of Irish meat abroad have all benefited," he said.
Mr Spellman said the minister must safeguard the suckler welfare scheme and the disadvantaged areas payments in the upcoming budget.
Not doing so would result in the demise of beef herds and the rural community for no real savings at all.
"The evidence we see coming from many marts at the moment is that dry cow sales are substantially up on 2008 figures.
"Many marts have indicated a 10-20% increase in dry cow sales which will have a detrimental effect on future calf births and the national herd.
"The suckler herd has already contracted by 6% this year, and if this trend continues we will have a greatly diminished beef industry in the years ahead," he said.
Mr Spellman said the success and results achieved by the suckler cow scheme provide a unique point of difference for the Irish beef production sector at home and abroad.
"It would be most regrettable if these achievements were to be diminished by a short-term perspective on the currently successful schemes," he said.
ICOS represents over 150 co-operative businesses and organisations with a combined 150,000 individual members, 12,000 employees in Ireland and overall business turnover of some €10 billion.
The Financial Times reports that Tory claims that the government was guilty of a “complacent” lack of ambition on saving public money on IT sparked a row as government insiders accused the opposition party of misinterpreting a document leaked ahead of next week’s pre-Budget report.
The clash over the Tory claims came within hours of David Cameron, the Conservative leader, apologising to MPs for mistakenly asserting last week that two Islamic schools were being funded by a scheme designed to combat extremism.
The PBR claims related to a leaked document setting out government proposals to save £3.2bn on government spending on IT “over the next 10 years”. The Tories highlighted the fact that £3.2bn as a cumulative saving would represent just 2 per cent of a total estimated £140bn expenditure.
“This document is thoroughly complacent. Where is the ambition? Where is the recognition of the fiscal crisis gripping Britain?”Francis Maude, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said. “This document shows that Labour are content to continue to waste taxpayers’ money.”
The Tories contrasted Labour’s stance with their own, more radical, plans to break up large IT contracts into smaller components to try to reduce the state’s reliance on a handful of suppliers. The party said on Monday night it intended to demonstrate its own commitment to open government by publishing the leaked report on a new website, http://www.makeitbetter.org.uk/, and inviting the public to comment.
But the main thrust of the attack appeared blunted when Treasury insiders said that the £3.2bn IT saving was an annual figure, announced in the Budget in April, and due to be achieved by 2013-14. If achieved, the reform would represent a saving of about 20 per cent of the estimated £16bn annual IT expenditure .
Officials refused to comment publicly on the leaked document. But Treasury insiders blamed the confusion on a poorly worded “very early-stage draft” of a document they said had not yet been signed off by ministers.
The Tories stood their ground, saying the leaked pledge to save £3.2bn over a decade was “clearly a watering down” of the Budget proposals.
The incipient row reflects the high political stakes surrounding the two main parties’ competing plans to improve public sector efficiency to help to reduce the fiscal deficit.
Liam Byrne, the chief secretary to the Treasury, will on Tuesday set out plans to shake up local government as part of detailed proposals for £9bn of annual efficiency savings first promised in the Budget.
Plans to grant town halls more spending freedom, axe dozens of central targets and set up a new “super-inspectorate” for public services will be included in the proposals.
The “Smarter Government” agenda reflects an attempt by Labour to muscle out the Tories on the issues of deregulation and localism. The proposed reforms to local government will involve devolving budgets, uniting fragmented funding streams for local government by 2011, including more than 30 funding allocations for housing.
According to the draft white paper, new pilots are also set to be launched to pool budgets for “frontline service leaders”, which could see head teachers and senior police officers paid from the same pot.
The paper comes as the government is poised to announce plans for local services to share buildings to cut costs.
The FT also reports that the owners of the Yukos oil group on Monday said they had won a crucial ruling that will allow them to seek up to $100bn in damages from the Russian government for the state’s takeover of the oil major.
An international tribunal in The Hague ruled that Moscow is bound by the terms of the Energy Charter Treaty, despite the fact that the Russian parliament has yet to ratify it. The ruling – following a year of deliberation – opens the way for Group Menatep, the Yukos holding company, to sue Moscow in the tribunal.
The company accuses Moscow of expropriating Yukos via a series of bankruptcies and asset sales that culminated in the state-controlled oil major Rosneft taking over what was once the country’s biggest oil producer.
Menatep is suing under article 45 of the energy charter, which protects investors against expropriations of assets by a state. Russia has sought to bring forward its own version of an energy charter, while refusing to ratify the existing one.
The legal battle goes to the heart of the state take-over of the oil sector that began when Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who headed Yukos, was arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion in October 2003. Yukos was broken up and sold off for $33bn in back taxes. Mr Khodorkovsky was convicted in 2005 and is still in prison, facing a second set of charges for money laundering and embezzlement.
Menatep argues Yukos had paid its taxes in full and the back taxes were retroactively – and selectively – applied in order to seize its property. Russia insists the tax charges were just and bankruptcy proceedings were fair.
“This is a huge step forward,” Tim Osborne, director of Menatep, said of the ruling on Monday. “The tribunal has decided without any caveat that the Russian federation is bound by the treaty and we are entitled to the treaty’s protection ... We now have to prove that Russia confiscated our assets without any compensation.”
A government spokesman said the ruling required “careful study”. He questioned how the charter could be applied to Russia when “it is not legally in force”.
The New York Times reports that like overstretched American homeowners, governments and companies across the globe are groaning under the weight of debts that, some fear, might never be fully paid back.
As Dubai, that one-time wonderland in the desert, struggles to pay its bills, a troubling question hangs over the financial world: Is this latest financial crisis an isolated event, or a harbinger of still more debt shocks?
For the moment, at least, global investors seem to be taking Dubai’s sinking fortunes in their stride. On Monday, the American stock market rose modestly, even as share prices plunged throughout the Persian Gulf.
But the travails of Dubai, a boomtown that, with its palm-shaped islands and indoor ski slope became a potent symbol of hyperwealth, nonetheless have some economists wondering where other debt bombs might be lurking — and just how dangerous they might turn out to be.
Big banks that have only just begun to recover from the financial shocks of last year are now nervously eyeing their potential exposure to highly indebted corporations and governments.
From the Baltics to the Mediterranean, the bills for an unprecedented borrowing binge are starting to fall due. In Russia and the former Soviet bloc, where high oil prices helped feed blistering growth, a mountain of debt must be refinanced as short-term i.o.u.’s come due.
Even in rich nations like the United States and Japan, which are increasing government spending to shore up slack economies, mounting budget deficits are raising concern about governments’ ability to shoulder their debts, especially once interest rates start to rise again.
The numbers are startling. In Germany, long the bastion of fiscal rectitude in Europe, government debt is on the rise. There, the government debt outstanding is expected to increase to the equivalent of 77 percent of the nation’s economic output next year, from 60 percent in 2002. In Britain, that figure is expected to more than double over the same period, to more than 80 percent.
The burdens are even greater in Ireland and Latvia, where economic booms driven by easy credit and soaring property values have given way to precipitous busts. Public debt in Ireland is expected to soar to 83 percent of gross domestic product next year, from just 25 percent in 2007. Latvia is sinking into debt even faster. Its borrowings will reach the equivalent of nearly half the economy next year, up from 9 percent a mere two years ago.
Like Latvia, the Baltic states of Lithuania and Estonia remain worryingly exposed, as do Bulgaria and Hungary. All of these nations carry foreign debt that exceeds 100 percent of their G.D.P.’s, said Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist for Russia and the former Soviet states at Nomura bank. External debt is often held in a foreign currency, which means governments cannot use devaluation of their own currencies as a tool to reduce their debt when they run into trouble, according to Maurice Obstfeld, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Few analysts predict a major nation will default on it government debts in the immediate future. Indeed, many maintain that rich nations and the International Monetary Fund would intervene if a government needed a bailout.
But there are no assurances that companies in these nations, which, like governments, gorged on debt in good times, will be rescued. Dubai’s refusal to guarantee the debts of its investment arm, Dubai World, may set a precedent for other indebted governments to abandon companies that investors had in the past assumed enjoyed full state backing.
“I see very good reasons to be worried that at some point in 2010 we are going to see more cases of ring-fencing because governments realize they can’t afford to guarantee the debts of these companies,”said Pierre Cailleteau, managing director of the global sovereign risk group and chief economist of Moody’s.
Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist whose recent book, “This Time Is Different,” chronicles 800 years of financial crises, said: “I think right now every vulnerable country has one or two deep-pocketed backers that pretty much rule out a sudden run.” But Mr. Rogoff said he expected a wave of defaults about two years from now, when the countries now serving as implicit guarantors turn their focus to economic problems at home.
One feature of the financial crisis is that some governments have taken on increasingly short-term debt. In the United States, for example, Treasury debt maturing within one year has risen from around 33 percent of total debt two years ago to around 44 percent this summer, while falling slightly since then, according to Wrightson ICAP. The United States will soon have debt problems of its own.
“In another couple years as industrialized countries’ own debts — in places like Germany, Japan and the United States — get worse, they will become more reluctant to open up their wallets to spendthrift emerging markets, or at least countries they view that way,” Mr. Rogoff said.
This might spell trouble for struggling nations. Facing a need to roll over their maturing debts, emerging markets may have to borrow around $65 billion in 2010 alone, according to Gary N. Kleiman of Kleiman International.
But while government debt may be a problem, corporate debt may set off a crisis that, in some ways, is already unfolding.
Corporate borrowing surged over the last five years. According to Mr. Kleiman, $200 billion of corporate debt is coming due this year or next year. He estimates that companies in Russia and the United Arab Emirates account for about half of that borrowing.
“This is where the Achilles heel is,”he said.
Companies in several countries face immediate tests. Companies in China will have to borrow $8.8 billion in 2010; companies in Mexico $11 billion.
According to an analysis by JPMorgan Chase, Russian companies borrowed $220 billion from banks or by selling bonds from 2006 to 2008. That is the equivalent of 13 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product. In the Emirates, that figure was $135.6 billion, or 53 percent of G.D.P.; in Turkey, it was $72 billion, or 10 percent of G.D.P.; and in Kazakhstan, it was $44 billion, or 44 percent of G.D.P.
In the past, if companies could not meet those obligations, governments might have stepped in. But already some companies have defaulted on payments after assumed government guarantees failed to materialize.
In Russia, for instance, the foreign debt totals more than $470 billion. But only a tiny fraction of that — about $29 billion — is sovereign debt. The rest is owed by Russian companies, including state giants like Gazprom.
The most troubling case in Russia is Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum company, which owes $16 billion and has been in a standstill on repayment this year while dealing with creditors.
A subsidiary of a Russian state aircraft manufacturer defaulted on bonds last autumn despite a presumed sovereign guarantee. In Ukraine, the state energy company, Naftogaz, and a state railroad, have restructured or asked to restructure their debt.
“This was a trail that was blazed in this part of the world,” said Rory MacFarquhar, an economist at Goldman Sachs in Moscow, referring to governments retreating from implied guarantees of state company debt, as in the case of Dubai World.
The Dubai World debt restructuring is already lifting borrowing costs for Russian companies that must repay a total of $20 billion in December, according to Vladimir Tikhomirov, chief economist of UralSib bank in Moscow.
The NYT also reports that Johnny R. Williams, 30, would appear to be an unlikely person to have to fret about the impact of race on his job search, with companies like JPMorgan Chase and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago on his résumé.
But after graduating from business school last year and not having much success garnering interviews, he decided to retool his résumé, scrubbing it of any details that might tip off his skin color. His membership, for instance, in the African-American business students association? Deleted.
“If they’re going to X me,”Mr. Williams said,“I’d like to at least get in the door first.”
Similarly, Barry Jabbar Sykes, 37, who has a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, now uses Barry J. Sykes in his continuing search for an information technology position, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life.
“Barry sounds like I could be from Ireland,”he said.
That race remains a serious obstacle in the job market for African-Americans, even those with degrees from respected colleges, may seem to some people a jarring contrast to decades of progress by blacks, culminating in President Obama’s election.
But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.
College-educated black men, especially, have struggled relative to their white counterparts in this downturn, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.
Various academic studies have confirmed that black job seekers have a harder time than whites. A study published several years ago in The American Economic Review titled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” found that applicants with black-sounding names received 50 percent fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names.
A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did.
The discrimination is rarely overt, according to interviews with more than two dozen college-educated black job seekers around the country, many of them out of work for months. Instead, those interviewed told subtler stories, referring to surprised looks and offhand comments, interviews that fell apart almost as soon as they began, and the sudden loss of interest from companies after meetings.
Whether or not each case actually involved bias, the possibility has furnished an additional agonizing layer of second-guessing for many as their job searches have dragged on.
“It does weigh on you in the search because you’re wondering, how much is race playing a factor in whether I’m even getting a first call, or whether I’m even getting an in-person interview once they hear my voice and they know I’m probably African-American?”said Terelle Hairston, 25, a graduate of Yale University who has been looking for work since the summer while also trying to get a marketing consulting start-up off the ground. “You even worry that the hiring manager may not be as interested in diversity as the H.R. manager or upper management.”
Mr. Williams recently applied to a Dallas money management firm that had posted a position with top business schools. The hiring manager had seemed ecstatic to hear from him, telling him they had trouble getting people from prestigious business schools to move to the area. Mr. Williams had left New York and moved back in with his parents in Dallas to save money.
But when Mr. Williams later met two men from the firm for lunch, he said they appeared stunned when he strolled up to introduce himself.
“Their eyes kind of hit the ceiling a bit,” he said.“It was kind of quiet for about 45 seconds.”
The company’s interest in him quickly cooled, setting off the inevitable questions in his mind.
Discrimination in many cases may not even be intentional, some job seekers pointed out, but simply a matter of people gravitating toward similar people, casting about for the right “cultural fit,” a buzzword often heard in corporate circles.
There is also the matter of how many jobs, especially higher-level ones, are never even posted and depend on word-of-mouth and informal networks, in many cases leaving blacks at a disadvantage. A recent study published in the academic journal Social Problems found that white males receive substantially more job leads for high-level supervisory positions than women and members of minorities.
Many interviewed, however, wrestled with “pulling the race card,” groping between their cynicism and desire to avoid the stigma that blacks are too quick to claim victimhood. After all, many had gone to good schools and had accomplished résumés. Some had grown up in well-to-do settings, with parents who had raised them never to doubt how high they could climb. Moreover, there is President Obama, perhaps the ultimate embodiment of that belief.
Certainly, they conceded, there are times when their race can be beneficial, particularly with companies that have diversity programs. But many said they sensed that such opportunities had been cut back over the years and even more during the downturn. Others speculated there was now more of a tendency to deem diversity unnecessary after Mr. Obama’s triumph.
In fact, whether Mr. Obama’s election has been good or bad for their job prospects is hotly debated. Several interviewed went so far as to say that they believed there was only so much progress that many in the country could take, and that there was now a backlash against blacks.
“There is resentment toward his presidency among some because of his race,”said Edward Verner, a Morehouse alumnus from New Jersey who was laid off as a regional sales manager and has been able to find only part-time work.“This has affected well-educated, African-American job seekers.”
It is difficult to overstate the degree that they say race permeates nearly every aspect of their job searches, from how early they show up to interviews to the kinds of anecdotes they try to come up with.
“You want to be a nonthreatening, professional black guy,” said Winston Bell, 40, of Cleveland, who has been looking for a job in business development.
He drew an analogy to several prominent black sports broadcasters. “You don’t want to be Stephen A. Smith. You want to be Bryant Gumbel. You don’t even want to be Stuart Scott. You don’t want to be, ‘Booyah.’ ”
Nearly all said they agonized over job applications that asked them whether they would like to identify their race. Most said they usually did not.
