The answer to the question in the title is yes. A sharp, clear yes. Of course, 2011 is not even over yet, so plenty more could happen this year. However, the legislature won’t start anything new this year, an increasingly…
Category: Economics
Update on the Georgia banking crisis
The FDIC recently released its enforcement actions against two more Georgia banks: Century Bank of Georgia in Cartersville and The Coastal Bank in Savannah. But The Coastal Bank had already gone public with that information. See this piece from the…
Missing from debt discussion and from the economy: economic growth
I’m pretty confident one way or another the debt limit will be raised. Great piece from the NYT today about the role of economic growth in the current deficit problem: Sure Cure for the Debt Problem: Economic Growth. Writer Catherine…
Some good news today: federal govt. and automakers agree to 54.5 mpg average by 2025
Some good news that got sort of lost on a rather grim news day. Automakers and the Obama administration today officially announced an agreement that almost doubles the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by…
Almost half of House Republicans opposed to Boehner plan from Ga., S.C. or Fla.
I was curious about which House members are firmly opposed to Boehner’s debt reduction plan — and I had a surprisingly hard time finding a list. The Hill has a list here. A sizable number of Republican representatives are still…
GDP growth at 1.3% annual rate, House fails to pass debt bill: Look out below!
No surprises here that GDP was overstated for the first quarter and was well below consensus for the second. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning, first quarter GDP was revised down to a .4% annual rate, and…
Hard-hitting pieces today in the SMN on entitlements and jobs
I like tough, plain talk — as long as it is grounded in facts. And that’s been the problem with so much of the rhetoric about the deficit and debt, especially from the Tea Party: not enough facts. As I…
Samuelson on the debt: “It’s the elderly, stupid.”
Robert Samuelson’s column this evening in the Washington Post has a deliberately provocative title: Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid. I’d say it’s a must-read for people who really want to understand the federal debt.…
90 years old. $3220 monthly income. $294 a month in rent.
There’s been a really interesting debate playing out on SavannahNow the last few days. First came this piece about a Savannah retiree, 90-year old Mary Hilton, who has been living for 60 years at the soon-to-be-history Strathmore Estates, which is…
Savannah area unemployment up year-over-year, but so are jobs
I’ve already posted about the misleading explanation by Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler for the statewide uptick in the unemployment rate to 9.9% in June. Butler blamed seasonal factors for data that has already been seasonally adjusted. Now the state…
Missing details in NPR’s coverage of military families with underwater mortgages
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…
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:…
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…