By Matthew Tarleton, Project Associate. I recently had the pleasure of hearing Mark Zandi (Chief Economist) and Stephen Cochrane (Managing Director) of Moody’s Economy.com share their perspective on the national and regional economic outlook. Both contributed many valuable insights during the four hour session; I’ll share some of the highlights with you here.     Moody’s has estimated with confidence that the recession officially ended in either August or possibly September....

By William Teasley, Project Manager.    At Market Street , we often use a quote in our presentations from the book World Class , by Rosabeth Moss Cantor: “Change is debilitating when do to us, but exhilarating when done by us.”  This is true in personal, professional, community, and national life and encourages those to be proactive before difficult situations become more challenging.  Today there are three pieces of legislation before the U.S. Congress that are critically important to...

By J. Mac Holladay, Founder and CEO. As many have written, we have never seen a recession quite like this one. This past week a couple of headlines add more power to that reality. On Thursday, September 10, a Wall Street Journal headline read “Income Gap Shrinks in Slump At the Expense of the Wealthy.” The very next day a headline in The New York Times read “Last Year’s Poverty Rate Was Highest in 12 Years.” So what gives? Interestingly, we can’t simply say that these headlines...

By J. Mac Holladay, Founder and CEO. This recession has been devastating in terms of job losses. 2008 was the worst year since 1945 and 2009 may eclipse that. Only one sector had a net gain of jobs in 2008 and that was healthcare. All the other sectors lost jobs by the thousands and even millions. An amazing 7 million jobs have disappeared since this recession started in late 2007 and nearly 26 million are unemployed or underemployed (many now working part-time). Weekly hours are near...

By Ellen Anderson, Research Manager.    According to the Pew Charitable Trusts , in 2007 only 8 percent of U.S. power production came from renewable sources – solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal - far short of the President’s goal of 25 percent by 2025. Midwestern states are leveraging their highly skilled technical workforce and wide open landscapes to reap the potential economic benefits of President Obama’s lofty renewable energy goals. It’s been all over the news from  Forbes’ ...

By Alex Pearlstein, Senior Project Manager.     I’ve recently relocated to Des Moines, Iowa as my wife attends medical school here. Needless to say, there are more than a few differences between Iowa’s capital city and Georgia’s (Atlanta), where I spent the last eight years of my life. All in all, government seems to work better here, as do city services. Metal plates lodged in the roadway during repair projects are actually removed in a day or two; in Atlanta, they become permanent...

By J. Mac Holladay, Founder and CEO.     The economic reports from across the nation remain confusing and contradictory. James C. Cooper at Business Week suggests that plunging inventories could lead to gains in orders and production with lifting payrolls to follow. Many economists are projecting a 2% GDP growth for the last half of 2009.   A report from the Congressional Budget Office last week paints a completely different picture. Their view is that unemployment will average...