Mucking around recently released USDA data, I came up with the table below for a presentation to the CFA Society Spokane yesterday. I doubt the average Washington citizen appreciates what an agricultural powerhouse the Evergreen State is. Everyone knows we are the leading producer of apples. But we’re also No. [continue reading . . . ]
Beginning in May 2010 and continuing for almost three years, aerospace employers in Washington State added to their payrolls at the rate of nearly 600 a month. Over eight months starting in April 2011, the pace of hiring was almost frantic, averaging about 900 a month, as Boeing scrambled to [continue reading . . . ]
The ports of Seattle and Tacoma are both spending heavily gearing up for shipping-container volumes vastly beyond anything they’ve handled to date. They both may be chasing pipe dreams that will prove costly to their taxpayers. Data from the Pacific Maritime Association shows that container “handle” at Tacoma peaked eight [continue reading . . . ]
Just back from three weeks in the Emerald Isle, two on a tour organized by the Rick Steves outfit out of Edmonds, Wash. We saw more of Ireland in those 21 days than most Irish get to see in a lifetime. I took enough photos to bore anyone to tears. [continue reading . . . ]
I was a newspaperman before I became, in order, a newsletter editor-publisher, then a self-trained economist and professional speaker. I still love newspapers. And not just the on-line versions. I still savor dead trees. Four newspapers thud on to my front porch on weekdays, five on Saturdays, two on Sundays. [continue reading . . . ]
We have not seen this movie before. We do not know how it ends. Unwinding the Fed’s Quantitative Easing (QE) programs and central banks’ near-zero interest policies (N-ZIRP), now in Year 5, were never going to be easy. But these have to be done eventually. The repression of interest rates [continue reading . . . ]
If you worry, as I do, about the future of the aerospace industry and its high-paying in Washington State, you won’t want to miss an excellent roundup of recent developments by Dominic Gates in today’s Seattle Times. Near the end of the long article, a quote from Leeham.net‘s Scott Hamilton [continue reading . . . ]
Years ago, from a back-row press seat at a Microsoft financial analyst meeting, I heard CEO Steve Balmer bellow that Microsoft would make software that “just works.” If memory serves, the much unloved Windows Vista was then the flavor of the month. In time it was succeeded by Windows 7, [continue reading . . . ]
For those of a certain age, the billboard remains etched in memory. It was April 1971. Boeing employment over the course of about three years had collapsed from more than 100,000 to fewer than 40,000 following cancellation of government funding for a supersonic transport and commercial orders for the then-shiny-new [continue reading . . . ]
The late Lady Margaret Thatcher had a four-word response to those who questioned her commitment to free and competitive markets: “There is no alternative.” The response earned her, so the Wall Street Journal reports, the nickname TINA, an obvious acronym. It occurs to me that the phrase is an appropriate [continue reading . . . ]
How anemic has been the recovery from the Great Recession? Here’s one way of looking at it. Until the Great Recession (December 2007-June 2009), the lengthiest recessions of the post-World War II era were 1973-1975 and 1981-1982, both at 16 months. The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau [continue reading . . . ]
A correspondent who heard my comments on Cyprus on KUOW’s Weekday program today asks: I am puzzled by some of your comments this morning. As I understand it, when a bank in the U.S. fails, the FDIC moves in and closes it. The accounts are protected by insurance up to [continue reading . . . ]