Another bit of dreary news for the Savannah economy, although the Georgia Department of Labor is once again trying to put a positive spin on it. The Savannah metro area’s unemployment rate “decreased” from 8.6% in March to 8.5% in…
I’ve written numerous times (including here and here) about my reasons for disagreeing with the passage of HB 87, Georgia’s new law that threatens draconian punishments for undocumented workers in the state while providing for very weak penalties for employers…
Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business, has been one of the most sobering — and most accurate — guides to the Georgia economy in recent years. While all…
In my Savannah Morning News column today, I grapple with the question “Live music: Does it have to start so late?” In my opinion, the short answer is no, but it’s a really complex question, the answers to which involve…
Well some very interesting news this morning from Jim Galloway at the AJC’s Political Insider. According to Galloway, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed are headed next week to Washington “for a strategy session on Port of…
Attending one great Savannah Music Festival performance after another, it’s easy to forget about the SMF’s tremendous education efforts. The most important of those efforts might be Swing Central Jazz, an ambitious effort to bring high school jazz bands to…
The Chicago Fed releases a monthly index for national economic activity. Their latest release: Index shows economic activity weakened in April. Now, that’s not to say that activity contracted as it would during a recession, but the pace of growth…
In one of my columns a couple of weeks ago about some cautionary economic data, I mentioned a bright side: the probability of falling gas prices. According to GasBuddy, gas prices per gallon have fallen about 20 cents since their…
I taught part-time at Armstrong Atlantic State University for five years beginning in 2000, and then I slipped into a fulltime temporary instructor slot beginning in 2006. A few days ago, I was offered and accepted that same position without…
First Georgia Banking Company of Franklin and Atlantic Southern Bank of were shut down by regulators this evening. From the FDIC press release: CertusBank, National Association, Easley, South Carolina, acquired the banking operations, including all the deposits, of Atlantic Southern…
I hear a lot of spin about Georgia’s relative economic health compared to other states, so I’ll just post these two charts with minimal commentary. These both appeared in the last day on Calculated Risk, an indispensable source for those…
We’re just a couple of days away from the first pickets by the Westboro Baptist Church here in Savannah. Over two weeks ago, I wrote about the news of the WBC’s appearance here, about some of the choices regarding community…
