Economy
Well, someday has come: Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the United States credit rating for the first time, dealing a huge symbolic blow to the world’s economic superpower in what was a sharply worded critique of the American political system. Lowering the nation’s rating one-notch below AAA, the credit rating…
Yesterday, I gave some thought to shifts in government policy and in American culture that may ultimately be behind our economy’s failure to recover satisfactorily. Much like the productive people who have been leaving Rhode Island because they’ve assessed that the opposition to needed reforms is simply too powerful, many Americans know what must be…
Thinking further about an aspect the topic that I raised this morning — namely, things that prevent Americans from forging their own way in this economy — many additional factors came to mind. A huge one is debt. On my short lunch break, I don’t have time to go in search of the link, but…
Andrew and Matt discussed ratings agencies and municipal receivers on last night’s Matt Allen Show. Stream by clicking here, or download it.
Derek Thompson touts these as “the 4 scariest economic graphs I’ve seen this year.” Basically, they chart every recession of the last fifty years in terms of a percentage of the previous peak. As a rule of thumb, I’m always skeptical about metrics that are multiple steps away from raw numbers, in this way. A…
Further to Justin’s post, we learned yesterday that A dozen companies – half of them out-of-state businesses looking to relocate to the Ocean State – are lining up to take advantage of the same controversial loan-guarantee program that drew Curt Schilling’s video game company, 38 Studios LLC, to Providence. Loan guarantees by the state are…
It’s getting kinda hard to take the spin that permeates economic reporting. Reporter Kate Bramson and her headline writer mainly adopt RI Department of Labor and Training Director Charles Fogerty’s line that the statistics show “slow, steady progress.” The headline and lede are, “Rhode Island unemployment dips slightly, to 10.8 percent, Still, 10.8% an improvement…
Under normal circumstances, this program might be an unalloyed positive, and I do believe that every student should have some familiarity with construction and trades: On Olmsted Way, a short street across from the Wanskuck Mill on Charles Street, 10 graduates of the YouthBuild Providence program are at work this summer, renovating 24 apartments in…
This AP analysis — or whatever you would call such an essay — by Calvin Woodward and Martin Crutsinger is dumb to the point of being offensive. Woodward and Crutsinger try to put the debt ceiling debate in terms of family finances, and the lede that the Providence Journal gave to the story captures the…
Michael Barone points to a piece by Fred Barnes (sub req’d, but Barnes has mentioned this before) that explains that helping an economy by reducing spending can be done. Barone summarizes: In the 1990s Canada’s Liberal party government reduced its national debt and revived its economy by, among other things, reducing federal employment by 45,000…