To say that there were a lot of business people interested in what speakers had to say at the Wichita Area Economic Outlook Conference this morning is an understatement.
It was standing room only.
The projections for Wichita were largely positive. Though everything — and I mean everything — was couched: “as long as there are no shocks to the system.”
That’s sort of scary considering there have been quite a few shocks recently.
You can read more here about how the Wichita economy is expected to perform in the next year.
It looks good.
Let’s hope the projections hold true.
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Wichita’s economic outlook is fine, “As long as there are no shocks to the system.” Who is living in a dream world here. The storm clouds have been gathering for at least a year but no one had the guts to be first to yell: “the wolf is coming, the wolf is coming.”
Boeing might look fine to outsiders but evidently Boeing’s stockholders don’t agree. The price of Boeing stock has cut in half during the past twelve months.
While not directly related to Wichita, another stock I watch is Haliburton Oil company stock, a company heavily involved in Iraq and international oil production. It’s stock has dropped like a rock from about 50 to 21 during the past three months.
It’s only wishful thinking that Wichita’s overall economy, related as it is to the airplane manufacturing industry, is not tied to the national and world economy. It looks like we are in a dribble down economic situation, the domino effect, a house of paper.
Wichita business and citizens need to immediately go into a strong defensive position against the coming recession.
The hard hit industry is going to be ethanol. Just with the recent news with ICM and the largest Pratt, KS ethanol company going completely bankrupt today is a sign that the ethanol boom is over.
While this might not affect Wichita too much, it will affect the small rural towns around Wichita, and those people will be needing jobs. I can see the rural community migrating to Wichita for work, so we will need to prepare for a population boom in our area, for towns like Pratt that could be loosing half their population in the coming years as people leave that community to come to Wichita.
Pratt, the Aspen of Kansas, is doing just fine. Located on the rushing headwaters of the south branch of the Ninnescah River, the beautiful river that that criss-crosses Highway 54 between Kingman and Cunningham.
Most of Pratt’s downtown buildings are occuppied. Pratt has both a large Wal-Mart store and large Dillons Grocery store. Pratt has a thriving industrial site at the old U.S. Army Air Force B-29 base only about three miles north of town.
Pratt currently has very few houses for sale due to influx of new residents from Greensburg and Wichita.
The economy of Pratt is diversified among the industries of oil production, agriculture or farming, and transportation.
I’m sure Wichita hobbles along on the backs of these small farm to market communities surrounding Wichita. Thanks to the Wichita EAGLE newspaper, the residents of these small agricultural type communities watch with considerable interest in the shannigans of Wichita.
The good thing is that KDOT has announce that the four-lane of Hwy 54 will start this month. A project that will go through Greensburg, by-pass and go around Pratt and onwards to Kingman where it will mate with the existing 4-lane.
This will greatly help out Greensburg and communities west of there on the Spirit Corridor. I know Pratt is getting left out, but the future isn’t there. It’s in Greensburg, Liberal and to El Paso.
We need to recognize that Wichita’s prosperity and the prosperity of surrounding towns are inextricably linked. One cannot happen without the other.
Ethanol needs to develop so that it uses cellulose as a feedstock. Then it can become a secure and stable industry. It cannpt do so based on irrigated corn.
Here in Wichita we should be diversifying into wind turbines – leveraging upon our aircraft expertise. Strong, light-weight composits and aerodynamics are strong suits for us – let’s use them. Aircraft is cyclical and with the global economic meltdown demand is likely to fall.