Economics

Next week, Antonio Villaraigosa will be overwhelmingly re-elected mayor of Los Angeles. Do not, however, take the size of his margin – he faces no significant opposition – as evidence that all is well in the city of angels.

Whatever His Honor says to the media, the sad reality remains that Los Angeles has fallen into a serious secular decline. This constitutes one of the most rapid – and largely unnecessary – municipal reversals in fortune in American urban history.  read more »

For decades, California has epitomized America's economic strengths: technological excellence, artistic creativity, agricultural fecundity and an intrepid entrepreneurial spirit. Yet lately California has projected a grimmer vision of a politically divided, economically stagnant state. Last week its legislature cut a deal to close its $42 billion budget deficit, but its larger problems remain.  read more »

There is something about Oregon that ignites something close to poetic inspiration, even among the most level-headed types. When I asked Hank Hoell recently about the state, he waxed on about hiking the spectacular Cascades, the dreamy coastal towns and the rich farmlands of the green Willamette Valley.

"Oregon," enthused Hoell, president of LibertyBank, the state's largest privately owned bank, from his office in Eugene, "is America's best-kept secret. If quality of life matters at all, Oregon has it in spades. It is as good as it gets. It's just superb."  read more »

I keep hearing how the current recession will end in 2010 because the average United States recession from 1854 to 2001 has been 17 months. This is silly for a variety of reasons.

One reason is that there is no average recession. Post-World War II recessions have lasted from a minimum of six months to a maximum of only 16 months. If we were to apply the “average recession” logic to post World War II recessions, the current recession, which the NBER — the National Bureau of Economic Research — says started December 2007, would have ended 10 months later, last October.  read more »

The assonant phrase “Dubai, Mumbai, Shanghai or Goodbye” was credited to Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times in late 2007 at the beginning of the financial crisis on Wall Street. For years, New York, London and Tokyo held sway as the world’s financial capitals. Then the tectonic plates of the financial world began to move and these new cities were going to be the prime beneficiaries.  read more »

What drives industry to locate in one region and not in the next?

Economic geography – the distribution of economic activity over physical space – has always been central to economic development. Policy-makers trying to encourage economic activity to locate in under-developed regions want answers: Is it infrastructure? Fiscal incentives? Good business environment? Or could it be agglomeration – the compounding effect of industry clustering in a particular location?  read more »

Call it the Paulson Principle, Part Deux.

Under the now thankfully-departed Treasury secretary, we got the first bailout for the undeserving – essentially, members of his own Wall Street class.

Now comes the Democratic codicil to the P. Principle. It's a massive bailout and expansion of the public-sector workforce as well as quasi-government workers in fields like health and education.  read more »

Our Central Wisconsin delegation journeyed to Finland in October, 2008. We definitely learned a few lessons that we’ll apply here at home, with the hope of moving our ability to compete globally to a much higher level.

“Finland is not a country, it is a club” stated one of the many presenters we heard during our study tour. This perspective of how Finns see themselves says something valuable about what they believe it will take for them to compete in the changing global economy: a whole lot of cooperation, strong relationships and inter-connectedness!  read more »

At the time of the election, less than 3 months ago, Seattle seemed to be riding above the fray, escaping the worst features of the recession, such as mass layoffs, even despite weakness in the housing market. Seattle area voters even approved a series of huge tax measures, including $30 billion for rail rapid transit, befitting what folks here like to consider a world-class city.

The story recently is much more somber, reeling somewhat from a series of high-level hits to the economy.  read more »

For much of its history, New York City has thrived as a place that both sustained a large middle class and elevated countless people from poorer backgrounds into the ranks of the middle class. The city was never cheap and parts of Manhattan always remained out of reach, but working people of modest means—from forklift operators and bus drivers to paralegals and museum guides—could enjoy realistic hopes of home ownership and a measure of economic security as they raised their families across the other four boroughs.  read more »