Thousands of Wisconsin residents are jobless and they may be staring at the face of a permanent recession For many years, Austen Frank met his family demands by delivering flowers to his clientele in Madison since the 1970s. “Back then, bouquet shops existed at every corner of the street”, he recalls with relative clarity, as if this happened a few days ago, “Most of them were operated by small-scale investors and did not want to employ their own drivers, so they contracted transport services.” Frank ran his own transport firm, delivering flowers all over the South Side region. As the size of his clientele increased, he employed two other drivers after purchasing more trucks. “During the holidays, I’d have, like, five drivers working full time.” The early 80s period saw a boom for the flower business as grocery stores and departmental stores started including flower departments in the stores. “At funerals, we received orders to supply flowers to members of the bereaved families and the small-scale florist was driven out of business as they could not cope with the competition.” Through his business, Frank was able to make a modest living and see two of his four children through high school and eventually through college. Meanwhile, many flower shops emerged and business grew slimmer, he saw an opportunity in the transport industry and opted to open a transport firm, retaining his staff. “The transport sector gave me the much-needed change after being in the flower business for almost 20 years,” he quips. Frank has been in the transport sector for close to 20 years, but last year, faced with a declining business and high costs of maintaining his staff and trucks, he shut it down. “It’s all due to the recession, I did what I had never thought of doing… at one point, I thought of applying for an overdraft as the company account had run dry,” he says, “but decided against it as no one knew when the recession was going to end”. He further adds that he has not had a decent sleep since he shut down the transport business; instead, he has been drinking excessively in a bid to forget all his sorrows. “I have been reduced to ashes, my 20 years of hard work has been flushed down the drain,” he laments. As if that was not enough, he had not finished paying his mortgage payments and still had one child to see through college. He awoke every morning still worn out from an avalanche of worries; he had nothing to call his own. His wife laying beside him was not aware of his struggles in paying up the mortgage loan he had taken 10 years ago to expand his business. While she prepares their youngest daughter for school, he goes to town to have a meeting with his bank manager, once again, to negotiate for the extension on his loan. “How long will it be before we get a foreclosure notice? Most of the neighborhood homes have either been given notices or have been foreclosed.” He adds. A survey of the South Side homes seems to corroborate his story as most of these either have large “FOR SALE” notices on the metallic gates or have been closed. The local council asserts that the overall foreclosure in the South Side is almost twice the national average. Frank has not come to terms with what confronts him. “Who would have thought that the Lehmann Brothers and General Motors would go bankrupt? Our economy has b