“The economy has changed, but the plan doesn’t need to,†said Sottile, referencing the city squares that Gen. James Oglethorpe laid out almost 300 years ago. “It survived the American Revolution, the Civil War and the 20th Century. And now it’s defining sustainability in the 21st Century.â€
OK, first a warning: don’t expect that we’ll continue to see such healthy numbers for home prices through the winter months.
There are certainly things that could have been done at the federal level — and to a lesser extent at the state and local levels — that could have softened the decline somewhat and put us on a slightly steeper recovery curve. But most of those potential moves would have been either politically impossible or would have carried other risks.
In my City Talk column last Sunday, I wrote about the declining inventory in the Savannah metro area housing market. We’re still a long way from where we need to be, but the twin trends of fewer new listings and increased sales have steadily whittled the inventory lower and lower, which has helped put a floor under prices.
Check out this interesting interview in the Aiken Standard with South Carolina State Ports Authority head Jim Newsome: S.C. Ports Authority’s Newsome reflects on three years as CEO and the path ahead.
Note that after every hint or announcement of more Fed action, the S&P came off a recent low.
Nationally, home prices are up compared to a year ago, according to Zillow, but that’s not the case for Atlanta, Charleston, Jacksonville, and plenty of other cities.
With so many East Coast ports rushing headlong to expand capacity and with such uncertainties in global trade, I’m left wondering if the complex economic analysis of the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project by the Corps of Engineers adequately took into account various scenarios that might have seemed unlikely a few years ago.
Christopher Lytle, executive director of the Port of Long Beach: “There’s just not going to be a huge movement of cargo from the West Coast to the East Coast.”
Ryan will likely fare fine in debates. He’s attractive and a good speaker (although he’s going to look a little too much like a long lost Romney son in campaign ads). His presence might inject into the campaign some real discussion about the federal budget and how to avoid the upcoming fiscal cliff — but the majority of voters will disagree with Ryan’s specific prescriptions. The more they hear, the less they’ll like.
When I wrote my City Talk column for today (Savannah airport business struggling compared to our rivals), I didn’t even know the board of Savannah/Hilton Head International was meeting today. I didn’t know anything about the report issued last week by the Center for American Progress: Oops, I Lost the Airport; Automatic Federal Budget Cuts Will Wreak Havoc in the Skies.
“Kerry O’Hare, director of policy at Building America’s Future, is skeptical of Atlanta-area voters who raised questions about accountability. She says it would be difficult to imagine getting a more detailed list of projects than what was released by the regional districts.”
