It’s Tuesday afternoon and we’re all admittedly punchy on the Eagle business desk.
So we were sitting around wading through all the Wall Street bailout news when my colleague Dan Voorhis mused aloud what kind of credit card Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson would need to snap up all those bad mortgages.
“What comes above platinum?” he wondered. “Black?”
I think black is probably appropriate, don’t you?
American Excess.
Don’t leave Wall Street without it.
The 2000s might might be called the “Outsourcing Decade” because of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs that went overseas. But with higher fuel costs, the cost of transportation is twice what it was a few years ago. That, and rising wages in China, are beginning to affect company’s decisions on whether to outsource to China or have the work done closer to home.
I’m on my bank’s home page and, frustratingly, I can’t get to my account. While continuing to try in vain, I can’t help but laugh at a little remark posted next to the bank’s annual report. It says “Bank X (not it’s real name) is sound.”
Of course, my immediate thought is how sound can the bank be if it can’t even keep its Web site working?
OK, that’s not entirely fair. Still, I laughed at the irony.
Christmas is still a long way away for most people, but retailers are already sweating heavily. With a mushrooming crisis on Wall Street, likely recession, rising unemployment and depressed home prices in some markets, even the normally optimistic National Retail Federation is predicting this will be a bad year for Christmas shopping nationally. The group is calling for growth of just 2.2 percent, half the annual average growth rate since 2000 and the worst since 2003.
That’s not to say that Wichita and its retailers will be affected as much. Although unemployment appears to be rising locally, the local economy remains solid for now. Maybe there will be some Christmas cheer, still, for Wichita stores.
Cancer treatments are advancing steadily, but the supply of cancer doctors isn’t, USA Today reports.
The United States could face a shortage of as many as 4,080 oncologists by 2020, according to a report from the American Society for Clinical Oncology.
Factors contributing to the impending shortfall include the aging of the U.S. population (cancer is more prevalent among older adults), retiring oncologists, and — shockingly — a growing number of female oncologists. Apparently, studies show female cancer doctors see fewer patients than their male counterparts.