Tools to Help Business Owners Understand and Survive the Financial Crisis
The Worst of Times – the Not So Worst of Times
Posted by John Slater on June 26, 2009
The recently released Brookings Institution Metro Monitor confirms something I have thought for some time; the recession’s impact has been very different in the Central U. S., including Memphis, where I live. Certainly unemployment is up, but there is no feeling of impending doom or of pervasive despair.
Fourteen of the strongest twenty metros in the report are in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa or Kansas. Memphis and its neighbor to the south, Jackson, MS, are in the second quintile. Housing prices in Memphis were flat from Q1 2008 to Q1 2009 and they were actually up in many of the Texas markets. “What’s going on here?” you might ask. Certainly the regional focus on agriculture and energy, which remain relatively strong, doesn’t hurt, but I don’t think that’s the primary issue. The mid-continent never enjoyed the full force of the Bubble to the extent experienced on the coasts, so we just didn’t have as far to fall.
This recession is proving to be a great leveler. My guess it that this applies not just to states and regions, but to economic strata as well. All that data which Robert Reich and others use to deplore a growing concentration of wealth at the top, has likely turned dramatically down over the past year as portfolio values have collapsed and outsized bonuses have become the bête noir of the American economy. For the first time in my thirty-six year career, fear stalks the halls of the major law firms as hundreds, perhaps thousands of six figure associates and more than a few seven figure partners have been laid off by some of the largest and most prestigious law firms in America and similar impacts are being felt throughout the higher end of the economy.
Categories: Business Survival, Economics, Uncategorized
Tags: Tags: Add new tag, Economics
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