Passing notes is apparently the way to go in Washington.
Kansas congressman Jerry Moran didn’t miss a chance this week to invite ex-Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for Agriculture Secretary, to visit the Sunflower State.
Moran said during a meeting, “I extended a written invitation” to Vilsack “so he could discuss issues with our farmers and ranchers in the state.”
Of course, Moran could have had good reason for making it a written invitation. Perhaps he included directions on how to get to Kansas.
There’s a recurring incident that we chuckle about in the Business Today cockpit every so often.
You make a call to a retailer for information. The reply comes across like a winter cold front: “We’re not interested in participating in any story.” Sometimes you get a bonus: “Corporate won’t be interested, either.”
Although cooperative retailers greatly outnumber that level of rudeness, it happens surprisingly often.
Now, left-leaning America-hating scalawags that we media types are (Warning: sarcasm alert), we nonetheless find humor in these little beatdowns.
Because, media folks have money. We’re consumers, too – consumers who take note of these little eruptions of rudeness and cross these businesses off our shopping list.
According to a Christmas retailing survey by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, independent retailers fared better – relatively speaking – than chain stores during the 2008 holidays.
The survey of 1,142 independent retailers, selling everything from books, toys to clothing, found that independent store sales were down 5 percent this Christmas season.
That’s bad news – but not as bad as Barnes & Noble, down 7.7 percent; Best Buy, down 6.5 percent; Borders, down 14 percent; J.C. Penney, down 8.1 percent; Macy’s, down 7.5 percent; The Gap, down 14 percent; and Williams-Sonoma, down 24.2 percent.
Overall, the Commerce Department says sales were down a record 9.8 percent in December over December 2007.
A new study panel has come up with a novel idea to keep greed from melting down the U.S. financial sector again: Regulate it.
In another blow to the notion that the market functions best unregulated, the Group of 30, headed by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, recommends that the government tighten its grip on the financial markets to insure transparency with closer attention to risk management.
Good call, since we now know that the unregulated financial markets actually function best for those who seek to manipulate them for personal profit. So much for the free market.
The tug of war between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and declining oil demand took another interesting turn Wednesday.
Meanwhile, OPEC’s making noise about further production cuts to try to “stabilize” oil prices.
Which force prevails here? Is demand so curtailed by the economic downturn that OPEC can’t stop the slide? Will a seller’s market return, with $3 and $4 gas down the road?
We work with words every day, so this story about the FDIC’s move to interject itself into the Great Banking Bailout caught my attention.
Apparently, billions won’t buy you a “must,” a “will” or a “do this or else” from the FDIC. But billions will buy you a “should.”
The Kansas Sampler Foundation has created a slew of “8 Wonders of Kansas” lists, but the one naming nominees to the 8 Wonders of Kansas Commerce list is a bit of a puzzle.
On the list are a bait shop in Baxter Springs, a meat market in Lucas, a really big steam shovel (Big Brutus) that hasn’t worked in 30 or 40 years. And a giant feed lot in Garden City? I guess that’s a wonder, but it ain’t wonderful smelling.
I know the foundation is rural-oriented, I know they’re trying to spread the awards around, and I know it does list the aircraft industry, but come on. A bait shop.
How about: Koch Industries and its scary black headquarters; the Coleman Co. which goes back to 1903; or Old Town.
We’ve had some good discussions on this blog about the cause of last summer’s oil price run-up.
Proponents of the supply and demand canard aren’t going to be pleased by Sunday’s 60 Minutes report tracing the run-up to investment speculators, and specifically Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
If you missed the report, the link provides a detailed – and impressively sourced, for those prone to criticize CBS’ reporting – summary of the investigation’s findings.
Once the number one electronics chain in the country, a shrunken Circuit City is facing a Friday deadline to find a buyer or sell off the merchandise and go out of business. Even a buyer may just dismantle the chain.
The west Wichita store survived the 155-store bloodletting in November and remains open.
Stay tuned.
Senior bank executives think that primary causes of the credit crisis are tied to lenders not sticking to the fundamentals, a push to make more Americans home owners and a wild and unregulated mortgage industry.
That’s according to results of a new survey of bank chief executives and senior officers by accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton and Bank Director magazine.
The survey was based on 339 responses to a survey mailed out to 3,000 bank executives in the U.S.
Fifty-four percent of bankers selected lax underwriting standards as the top cause for the credit crisis. Political emphasis on increasing home ownership and lack of oversight of the mortgage industry rounded out the top three reasons for the credit crisis.
This survey is undoubtedly one of many in the coming months that will attempt to assign blame for the crisis to one particular industry or group.
Whether that’s true remains to be seen.
It will likely be years before the true causes of the crisis will be established.
I took a quick and dirty look at how Wichita’s economy moves compared to national business cycles. This may give us a hint for when local employment here will start to rise again. The answer: it won’t be soon.
Here’s what I found in the last two cycles. What this shows is that Wichita’s employment starts to fall six months or less after the national GDP peaks and starts to fall, as local companies react to bad news and falling customer orders. But Wichita employment doesn’t stop falling and start rising again for 18 months to 3 years after the national economy hits bottom and starts to rise — which, at this point, is as least six months away. In other words, it could be 2-3 years or more from now before Wichita employment starts to rise again.
Peak Trough Peak Trough Peak Trough
National July 90 Mar 91 Mar 01 Nov. 01 Apr 01 ?????
Local Dec 90 Jan 94 Apr 01 Jul 03 Oct. 07 ?????
Diff. 5 mos 3 yrs 1 mo 1yr, 8 mos 6 mos.
Although employment is a lagging indicator, I used it in Wichita because we don’t have a timely local GDP number. Wichita’s economy will almost certainly start expanding again sooner than 2 or 3 years, but it takes that long for companies to start hiring.
Cargill’s growth in 2008 — not Koch’s decrease — was responsible in the two reversing positions in the top two spots as America’s largest private companies, according to Forbes.
Forbes’ ranking pushed Cargill to No. 1 in 2008 with total revenue at $110.63 billion, a considerable jump from the Minnesota-based company’s No. 2 standing at $82.49 billion. Meanwhile, Forbes’ most recent report showed Koch’s revenues at $98 billion, an increase of $8 billion over what the magazine reported for the Wichita-based company in 2007.
As of November, Forbes estimated Koch’s employee total at 80,000 — the same total it reported for the company the in November 2007. Cargill showed a slight increase with 152,600 employees in ‘08 — 1,800 more than Forbes listed in ‘07.