In one of my first posts on this blog — Homebuyer tax credits: A post mortem — I wrote about a particular military couple that had bought a home at too high a price who are now underwater on their…
Author: bill dawers
Ben Sollee / Cheyenne Marie Mize / General Oglethorpe & the Panhandlers – Forsyth Park – 09/03/11
Well this is shaping up to be a great gig in Forsyth Park, right on the cusp of fall. From the Savannah Bicycle Campaign press release: Classically trained pop cellist Ben Sollee and his band will headline a concert at…
Larry Summers on the insufficient stimulus
A wonkish post. Ezra Klein with The Washington Post has a fascinating interview online with former treasury secretary Larry Summers. They talk about Keynes, regulation, financial crises, and politics. They also talk about the stimulus of early 2009. Summers says:…
Gus the bulldog really wants an indoor pool
Home prices leveling off — at least for now
Amidst all the strife over the debt ceiling, today’s Case-Shiller release sort of got lost in the news. As expected, the index for May (actually an average of March, April, and May) showed prices up about 1% compared to April,…
Will Savannah jump on the food truck bandwagon?
I’m sure I made some people mad with my column this morning in the SMN: Savannah suffers food-truck envy. On Facebook and in private conversations, I’ve been hearing again and again about how exciting food trucks would be in Savannah…
“Lord I want to thank you for my smokin’ hot wife”
Great prayer at a Nascar race in Nashville. “Thank you for the Dodges and the Toyotas . . . ” “Thank you for Sunoco racing fuel . . .” “In Jesus’ name, boogity, boogity, boogity . . .”
More on federal revenues as percent of GDP
A couple of days ago in a post about the debt ceiling debate, I pointed out that federal revenues as a percent of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. Check out this interesting graph from this post at…
Chicago Fed index a good barometer of economic activity
There’s a lot of economic data that I follow that rarely makes it into my columns in the Savannah Morning News. That’s certainly true for the Chicago Fed National Activity Index, which I check monthly but rarely mention in print.…
Denver, Atlanta, trains, and taxes
I’ve been writing a lot lately about transportation issues. In today’s column, I follow up to last week’s column about the proposed new regional sales taxes to fund transportation infrastructure projects. That proposed 1% regional sales tax, which will is…
Debt problems weren’t a crisis, but will become one with default
President Obama – and presumably the Congressional Democrats that he thought he had on board – offered some big concessions last week in terms of the debt and deficits. No matter where they come from, $3 trillion in cuts including…
Regretting the end of Borders
In spring 1993, when I was living just outside Philadelphia, I quit a fulltime teaching job even though I had no clear plan what I would do next. I had saved a little money, so the next step really didn’t…
Georgia labor commissioner gives misleading explanation for grim new employment data
I’ve been increasingly frustrated by the spin promoted by the Georgia Department of Labor under new Commissioner Mark Butler. In the spring, he cited weak job growth numbers as a sign of improvement in Georgia’s employment picture, but did not…
Jazz Night with Transcendental Swing – The Sentient Bean – 07/21/11
I’m breaking one of my own rules with this post. I’m focusing my music calendar, which can be seen in its entirety here, on exceptional or promising gigs by touring acts — the go-and-hear-this-group-if-you-want-a-better-music-scene acts. All very subjective, of course.…