News Cut: March 12, 2009 Archive

Tracking the stimulus: Transportation projects

Posted at 4:31 PM on March 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The mailbag reveals that the Minnesota Department of Transportation has decided how to spend the economic stimulus money heading this way.

The list of projects for outstate (aka "greater") Minnesota can be found here. They include such things creating "living" snow fences in Monticello (I-94) and Atkinson Bridge to installing traffic lights in Fergus Falls. (See pdf)

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The Obama Industrial Average?

Posted at 4:48 PM on March 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Politics

Last week, some of the partisan commentators were suggesting that the administration of Barack Obama was a failure in its first days, using the Dow closing average as one yardstick. When the Dow closed at its lowest level in 12 years, it had dropped 18% since the day of Obama's inauguration.

Today, the Dow closed at 7170, or 9.7 percent below Inauguration Day. Did Obama become an 8.3 percent better president in one week?

Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele picked a bad time to send out a fundraising letter:

President Obama and Liberal Democrats in Congress don't seem to grasp the fact that since the Democrats took total control in Washington, the stock market has lost over 20% of its value. And over 50 million middle class Americans have lost a huge amount of their life savings.

By the time it arrived, Steele's numbers were already wrong. Can you measure the performance of a president based on the stock market? The Associated Press tried on Monday.

Some investors blame the slow-motion crash on Wall Street's disappointment with the government's $787 billion stimulus plan, its seemingly endless bailouts and the lack of specifics on how to rid banks of toxic assets.

Others say Obama inherited a recession destined to become the worst since World War II. And they note that the market was already in awful shape at the tail end of the Bush administration, down 44 percent from the market's 2007 peak to Inauguration Day.

Here's recent Wall Street performance over the same period for other recent presidents:

George W. Bush - 2nd term	+2.8%
George W. Bush - 1st term	-3.5%
Bill Clinton - 2nd term	+2.8%
Bill Clinton - 1st term	+5.7%
George H.W. Bush	+2.1%
Ronald Reagan - 2nd term	+3.6%
Ronald Reagan - 1st term	+4.3%
Jimmy Carter	-1.2%
Richard Nixon (2nd term)	-5.5%
Richard Nixon (1st term)	-1.5%

Incidentally, with very little fanfare, MPR added some financial tools to its Web site not long ago. You can find some calculators and other things to play with here.

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Selling the things you love

Posted at 4:59 PM on March 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Michael Caputo, who helps run Minnesota Public Radio Public Insight Network, is looking for stories about whether you'd sell the things you'd love to pay the bills.

Here's his story:

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Okay, money doesn't buy happiness. And accumulating stuff shouldn't make us whole.

But there are some possessions that have value greater than the pricetag. And yet, in a recession, when the times get tough ... you sometimes have no choice but to part with these sentimental items.

Take the case of Jonathan Stimes. More than 20 years ago his father gave him several gold coins. They were a gift of labor, Stimes said, for work that father and son did on a family farm in Illinois.

But Stimes, of Burnsville, has lost his sales job and needs to keep the house paid for. So he decided to part with those gold coins. He tells the story from here.

"My stoic Norwegian Dad would have just shrugged and said, 'well, this is what we put it away for.' But when I handed (the coins) over in exchange for the check, I became rather emotional and had to leave the shop quickly. There are tears in my eyes as I write this now because I still miss him and I know deep down he would have rather that money gone for something more special than a mere two house payments."

Stimes wrote this in response to a question Minnesota Public Radio news posed: Have you considered selling something to boost your income?

What we heard was illuminating -- not only because of the reasons that people sell items, but because of what these items meant to them.

Some have peddled (or contemplate peddling) beer can collections, amphibious ATVs or fluke scopemeters (I had to look that one up). Some sold items to increase cash flow, to get out of debt problems or to stockpile money for the rocky road ahead.

Others, like Chris Carlson of Mound said that initially he sold stuff to pay the bills. But now the business owner says he's peddling possessions as a lifestyle choice.

"I continue to sell my good unwanted items as an alternative to the land fill. Its amazing with the exposure you can get with online listing services there is always someone out there that wants whatever it is. I typicaly list for 1 cent or 99 cents to ensure it gets bought. I now do it for the environment I even keep the packaging peanuts from work that would normaly be discarded and box them up and sell them"

So is anything possessing you to part with your possessions? Are you needing to suppliment your income? Is it a lifestyle choice? Are you parting with something that means a whole lot to you?

What are you willing to part with to make ends meet?

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