Your State Recovered, Yet?

Stateline has a piece on a new report from Moody's Economy.com identifying states that have already emerged from the recession:

As the national economy starts its slow recovery, 11 states and the District of Columbia are showing signs of emerging from the recession, according to a new report.

Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington, D.C., are in recovery, according to Moody’s Economy.com, an economic forecasting firm. It determines where a state is in the recession based on employment rates, home prices, residential construction and manufacturing production figures. Some or all of these indicators were stable or improving in these states.

The firm also reported that, as of September 2009, Nevada remains firmly gripped by the worst recession because these indicators are still dropping significantly due to the plunging tourism, gambling and construction industries. The rest of the states, while still in recession, have seen the pace of their decline slow down, or moderate.

Technorati Tags: economy

Thoughts about 11/9/89

The New York Times has two thoughtful pieces on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  They are here and here.

What to think of the jump in unemployment & the easing of payroll declines

The Wall Street Journal has a summary of opinions from leading economists here.

Technorati Tags: Economy

Music for a Friday

Doesn't get any better. . . .

Nowism

Sometimes, the marketing gurus just amaze me with their abilities to make Marshall McLuhan, Timothy Leary and Buckminster Fuller seem like stodgy bastions of common sense. Trendwatching.com has a piece describing "nowism," the newest megatrend affecting US consumers

“Consumers’ ingrained* lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

*In the end, just like all our other trends, NOWISM represents a case of consumers jumping on something the moment they actually can. So, the need is never new, the new ways to fulfil it are.

The post is here. If you have any idea what they may be talking about, please let the rest of us know.

Technorati Tags: innovation, strategy

Should the US follow the Israeli-style policies to promote enterpreneurs?

That's what the Economist argues.  If the US wants to stimulate the growth of new enterprises, it is best to avoid costly mistakes by countries like Norway and Canada and follow the Israeli example:

The country that has led the world in promoting entrepreneurship has also done the most to plug itself into global markets. The Israeli government’s venture-capital fund, which was founded in 1992 with $100m of public money, was designed to attract foreign venture capital and, just as importantly, expertise. The government let foreigners decide what to invest in, and then stumped up a hefty share of the money required. Foreign venture capital poured into the country, high-tech companies boomed, domestic venture capitalists learned from their foreign counterparts and the government felt able to sell off the fund after just five years.

Technorati Tags: economy, innovation

Slump Prods Firms to Seek New Compact With Workers

So says a recent headline in the WSJ. What kind of "compact" are they talking about?

Two-thirds of big companies that cut health-care benefits don't plan to restore them to pre-recession levels, they recently told consulting firm Watson Wyatt. When the firm asked companies that have trimmed retirement benefits when they expect to restore them, fewer than half said they would do so within a year, and 8% said they didn't expect to ever.

Some compact, eh?

Technorati Tags: talent