The best thing about yesterday’s release of September jobs data for the state of Georgia is that the press release only contained a little bit of spin — and that was justifiable spin. In recent months, the Dept. of Labor…
From the NYT piece Gloom Grips Consumers, and It May Be Home Prices: In Orlando, a city that trades in upbeat fantasies, the housing crash has been particularly painful. The total value of area homes has fallen below the total…
I sent this link out to my Twitter followers already. But I thought it deserved a post here on the blog. The Street Light is a great blog mainly about economic issues that I have found myself reading more and…
There was a slight uptick today in the index tracking homebuilder confidence, but the number is still extremely low. We’re not going to see any significant increase in new construction of owner-occupied units until much more inventory is absorbed. That’s…
Three banks have been shut down by federal regulators so far this afternoon: First State Bank in Cranford, NJ; Blue Ridge Savings Bank Inc. in Asheville, NC; and Piedmont Community Bank in Gray, GA. There have been 79 failed banks…
Typically, post World War II recessions have had relatively little lasting impact on retail sales. The numbers will be sluggish for a few quarters, and then they’ll work their way back to the long-term trends. In a great Calculated Risk…
Martin Feldstein, the Harvard-based economist who served for a couple of years as chair of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors almost 30 years, tackles the lingering burden of mortgage debt in today’s NYT: How to Stop the Drop in Home…
I was skeptical of the decision to call summer 2009 the end of the recession. Too many indicators remained below their previous highs — in many cases far below — and some have still not recovered. As I’ve noted here…
I’m a big fan of The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, a columnist who deals primarily with financial matters. His writings rely on data that he has interpreted clearly. And, unlike some other economics columnists, he understands political realities and takes…
From today’s AJC: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. accuses the executives and directors of of Alpha Bank & Trust of sloppy lending practices and strategy focused on “growth above all else, including safety and soundness,†according to a lawsuit filed…
I used to be a big fan of David Brooks and his NYT column, which sometimes dealt with politics through a realistic, right-of-center perspective and sometimes seemed to channel significant cultural trends into a nifty 750 words. But what’s going…
The U.S. economy added 103,000 jobs in September, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate remained steady at 9.1%. The numbers are seasonally adjusted. Adding jobs is obviously better than losing them, but…
I have been highly critical of the ways in which Georgia’s leadership has dealt with the 2007 to 2009 recession and the sluggish growth that has followed. There’s now mounting evidence that Georgia and other Southern states have slipped back…
I’ve written a number of times lately about the particularly weak economy in the South. So far, despite the concerns and predictions of economists like Nouriel Roubini, the data suggests that the nation as a whole is not currently in…
