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Monthly Archives: August 2013

A St Paul Moment

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I believe that I am due a few vacation daze in the summer, especially when I’ve had a long, bad day.  Here is a piece on my city from 2010, in part to commemorate National Night Out.

I came home from a meeting with a client and there they were.  A whole team of guys with buzzing and growling equipment filling Irvine Park with motion and clouds of dirt.  It wasn’t an unusual scene, since the Parks Department does their share to mow regularly – but these guys were different.  It was some private company out trimming and mowing and generally making our li’l park look better than it has in a long time.

What makes this a Saint Paul Moment wasn’t clear until I asked one of them what happened.  Did the city contract out the maintenance?  No.  “The owner of our company’s son is getting married here this weekend, and he wanted it to look nice.”  So he just set his crew loose on our public park and made it look great. That is a Saint Paul Moment.  You just do it. Continue reading →

Chair(wo)man of the Fed

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Who will succeed Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve?  It’s come down to two people as far as anyone can tell, Larry Summers and Janet Yellen.  Or, sometimes more accurately, Larry Summers and not Larry Summers.   This is a terrible shame because no person has done more to earn the post than Yellen.

Yet Summers seems to remain Obama’s choice for the job despite growing opposition.   On the other side, support is growing in the popular press for Yellen as an opportunity to break the glass ceiling for women.  It’s heating up as a battle that Obama may avoid by picking a third candidate that no one is concentrating on now, but the loss would be terrible if Yellen doesn’t get the nod.  Here’s why.

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What is Employment?

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There’s been a lot of good economic news lately, the second year in a row that July uncharacteristically surged ahead.   The “ISM Index” poll of manufacturers looked more positive than it has since 2008, even with a strong US Dollar.  Initial claims for unemployment fell to 326k last week, another low since 2008.  US GDP grew at 1.7% in 2Q13, not exactly great news but far better than expected (and accompanied upward revisions to previous quarters).  The ADP employment report showed a net gain of 200k jobs, the rosiest figure of them all.  Only 82k of those came from small businesses, with large companies gaining a new high of 60k jobs added – meaning that for the first time since 2008 big companies are in a hiring mood.

By the time you read this, the official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment report for July should have come out, and it should be roughly in line with the more smooth ADP figure.  Now that we are really turning a corner, as Barataria expected in 2013, it’s time to take an in-depth look at what “employment” means and why there’s still so very far to go.

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