I’ve been posting regular updates about the decline in vehicle miles driven in the United States over the last few years. The most recent post is here. Obviously, much of the decline is related to the weak economy of the…
I’ve written a number of times about Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. Here’s an excellent — if overly dramatic — 23-minute video from the WSJ that gives great background and discusses the ways in which the EU, the Eurozone, the ECB, and others have allowed the crisis to fester:
At a New Year’s Eve party last night, a native Savannahian who has spent much of her life living in New York asked me why we didn’t have an Apple store here. And then another guest, one who has had…
This is another in a short series of posts looking at credible economic predictions for 2012. There’s a great piece in the Washington Post today, 2011 was a bust — could 2012 be better? Of course, 2011 was not a…
Here’s the chart of gas prices for Savannah, Atlanta, and the U.S. for the last 12 months from GasBuddy.com. The relatively steep rise in gas prices in the first part of the year was a key reason (but not the…
Today Sears released the names of 79 Sears or Kmart stores that will be closed. Another 20 to 40 stores are expected to be added to this list. According to the company, “a typical store that is being closed employs…
This is the 2nd of an indeterminate number of posts with other analysts’ and columnists’ economic predictions for 2012. I posted David Wessel’s from the WSJ here (it’s referenced in this post). If you’re interested in sober, thoughtful, and comprehensible…
My upcoming City Talk column (New Year’s Day) is devoted to my predictions for the local Savannah economy in 2012, so as a prelude I’m going to round up some opinions about the national economy and post them here on…
I’m assuming that there won’t be any bank failures on Friday, Dec. 30, which means we can look at the data for the year as a whole. The FDIC shuttered 92 banks in the U.S. in 2011; 23 of those…
There are obviously lots of potential answers for the question in my title. But since posting earlier today about the extreme declines for Atlanta home prices in September and October according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices, I’ve been looking at a…
I follow a lot of monthly economic data that I don’t post here on the blog, but I’ve been paying regular attention to the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration estimates of total traffic volume. The prolonged decline in…
The title of today’s S&P/Case-Shiller press release pretty much says it all: The Fourth Quarter Starts with Broad-based Declines in Home Prices Case-Shiller looks at repeat sales of homes. It’s one of the most widely respected home price indices, but…
