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Are you the type of person to laugh at economic news? When Planet Money comes on the air, do you stuff $50s in your ears and light your cigar with a burning copy of James Surowiecki’s latest column? Ha! What recession?
Well, if you’re like that, or if you just love bourbon, retailer Neiman Marcus has a package you may be interested in.
From My Loueyville:
Specifically, the Maker’s Mark Masters Distiller package offered on page 58 of this year’s Neiman Marcus Holiday Fantasy catalogue. Here’s the description.
“Any whisky aficionado will tell you it is perfection in amber. Maker’s Mark® Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky is handmade in small quantities of just 19 barrels, each batch distilled and aged with the same exacting standards the Samuels family has passed down for seven generations. As Master Distillers for a day, you and a friend will have an all-access VIP experience like no other, with Master Distiller Kevin Smith as your host. You will participate in the unique whisky-making process step by step, for an insider’s look at how every detail makes every glass a special occasion. This gift experience includes a two-bottle memento of the rarest Maker’s Mark bottles ever: Two golden bottles will be etched with your likeness and dipped in gold wax with 24-kt. gold flecks. You’ll also get to hand dip six of your own 375ml Maker’s Mark bottles in signature red wax and take them home. The experience includes luxury accommodations in Louisville and a gourmet dinner hosted by Bill Samuels, Jr. (the top dog at Maker’s Mark).”
The cost? $7,500.
Kentucky’s general and road fund receipts for October were down 4% this year compared to 2008. It looks like the General Assembly will head into the next session facing a 1.3 billion dollar shortfall for the next biennium. Will the calls for expanded gaming (again) and higher cigarette taxes (again) will inspire the legislature to pick up the pace for the 60-day session?
WHAS-TV’s parent company Belo Corporation has posted a 150 million dollar loss for the last quarter. There’s no word on what this means for WHAS, but let’s hope news coverage remains strong. As we’ve seen with newspapers, cutting news staff doesn’t help much in terms of audience growth.
The Dallas-based TV giant’s losses are likely due to falling advertising revenue.
From Business First:
Total revenue decreased 17 percent in the third quarter when compared to the same period last year. Spot ad revenue was down 21 percent, including political ads.
The automotive advertising category alone plummeted 36 percent over last year.
Remember when the Mayor went to Florida last year? He took bourbon and business leaders and tried to lure young professionals to Louisville.
Did you ever notice that every so often, someone involved in business or education holds a press conference to announce a new plan to bring people with college degrees to Derby City?
Well, maybe those tactics are working.
The AP reports that college graduates are flocking to unexpected areas, most notably, the Southwest. But on the map, you can see a pale red box over Louisville. The city has a relative gain of outsiders with higher education. These brainy nomads are setting up shop in Falls City, but the Lou has a long way to go before it tops Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix or the Northwest.
Considering the economic benefit of an educated workforce and the amount of negative migration indicated on the map, I’d file this story in the “Any gain is positive” folder.
So the Courier wrote about how no one reads the paper version of the newspaper anymore.
At The Courier-Journal, daily print circulation was down 11.2 percent to 168,158, and Sunday circulation was down 5.3 percent to 238,612, according to publisher Arnold Garson, who noted that other metro newspapers reported far larger losses.
With newspapers around the country in decline, there’s a gap in reliable, well-funded, fair journalism. Some people don’t mind living with the gap, but those in the dying medium and those who study it are calling for something to fill the gap. I don’t know what that something will be, but I imagine that people are willing to pay for news they value.
The Awl has graphed the decline of newspaper circulation. It’s hard to find an specific trends, except for the drop at the end. Maybe there’ll be a pickup when the economy recovers, but maybe people will be used to not reading the physical copy of the paper.
I just got this press release. Our economy is apparently not in a man-cession. That is, a recession that hurts men more than it hurts women.
At first, the idea of a man-cession kind of makes sense. The industries that are hardest hit are those with male-heavy workforces (manufacturing, etc). But the concept starts to fall apart when you think about how deep the recession goes and factor in pay discrepancies, etc.
So tonight at the Kentucky Center, economists will explain away the concept of a man-cession. The event includes a local panel of experts moderated by Fox 41’s Julie Tam. I’m tempted to go and find out why it isn’t called a He-cession. Man-cession is clunky. It’s not the next bromance or spork.
WHAT: New St. Louis Fed research debunks the popular notion that the current recession is predominantly a “man-cession”—a recession hurting American males proportionately more than women and other demographic groups. The truth is far more interesting than that. Presenting his findings is St. Louis Fed vice president and economist Howard Wall.
WHY: The burdens of a recession are not spread evenly across demographic
groups. To have a more complete understanding about what recessions mean for people, you have to examine the different effects of this and previous recessions on employment experiences across a range of demographic categories: sex, marital status, race, age and education level. A better understanding of the total effects of recessions will help us manage the effects of the current recession and be better prepared for future ones.After the presentation, a panel of local experts will discuss the report’s implications for Louisville’s future economic development. The panel will be moderated by Julie Tam, news anchor with Fox 41 TV.
· Cash Moter, president, Young Professionals Association of Louisville
· Carolyn Gatz, principal, Gatz & Associates
· Nat Irvin, II, professor of management, College of Business, University of Louisville and founder and president, Future Focus 2020
Metro Government’s stimulus page now has a map to show where the federal money will be spent.
Little did I know that the sidewalk construction I walk by every day is a stimulus project. Well, since the sidewalk was torn up before the stimulus package passed, I assume this was a “Shovel-ready” job.
Here’s what we reported on today:
CNN’s chief national correspondent and touch-screen enthusiast John King visited Kentucky for a piece on the horse racing industry and the economy.
Kentucky is to horse racing what Michigan is to the domestic auto industry. Racing and breeding thoroughbreds is a multibillion-dollar business in the state and the source of some 100,000 jobs.
But “The Sport of Kings” is hardly exempt from these painful economic times, and in fact is taking a severe blow in the global recession.
“It’s truly an international industry, so we have people, a lot of buyers, from Europe come in. And they have dialed back,” McLean said. “Domestic buyers have dialed back their participation, as well. The good horses are still bringing decent money, but everyone has to lower their expectations.”
Those lowered expectations may need to continue as boom times remain a distant hope.
McLean sees another lean year next year, and then hopes for a rebound because of an odd twist to the laws of supply and demand. In 2008, when the stock market was plummeting, 30 percent fewer mares were bred, so the supply of horses available at auction the year after next will be smaller.
“I think people just decided to pull back,” McLean said. “So the supply of horses available at auction will be reduced and that should start to help market conditions.”
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, and it’s time to stop procrastinating. Sloth is a sin, after all.
Kansas State University researchers did some number-crunching and mapped the distribution of the seven deadly sins. They used certain criteria to determine the geographic distribution of sin:
- Greed: Average incomes versus total inhabitants below the poverty line
- Envy: Total number of thefts (robbery, burglary, larceny, and stolen cars)
- Wrath: Total number of violent crimes (murder, assault and rape) per capita
- Lust: Sexually transmitted diseases per capita
- Gluttony: Number of fast-foot restaurants per capita
- Sloth: Expenditures on arts, entertainment and recreation versus rate of employment
- Pride: An aggregate of the six other sins
Kentucky avoids gluttony and sloth, but the map seems more like a reflection of wealth than virtue, especially with sloth. Poorer states are the least slothful by these criteria. Detroit is a hotbed for every sin except sloth and gluttony.
The conclusions make sense if you think about the locations and their history. But does that mean anything in a discussion of apparent righteousness? Should such a discussion even be held?
