| Click here for yesterday's / today's market indices
|
|
| SW Florida's joblessness nears 12%
|
| Southwest Florida's unemployment rate vaulted to an average 11.7 percent in June, amid simmering criticism nationwide that the $787 billion federal stimulus package is not cascading down quickly enough. The figure marks the second consecutive month that the local jobless number has been at its highest level in at least 30 years.
|
| @ Sarasota Herald Tribune | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0201 EDST
|
| Flippers' toll: On Gulf Coast, half a billion in defaults
|
| All across Sarasota and Manatee counties, the price increases defied logic. More than 100 properties from Palmetto to North Port doubled in price in a single day during the recent real estate boom. Proposed condos -- no more than ideas on paper -- flipped two or three times before anyone moved in. At least 37 groups of property flippers operated in Sarasota and Manatee counties. The groups bought hundreds of properties worth more than $350 million and sold them to associates for inflated prices.
|
| @ Sarasota Herald Tribune | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0315 EDST
|
| Bradenton unemployment hits record high
|
| Manatee County’s unemployment rate climbed to 11.8 percent in June, the highest on record. Manatee County had 31,502 residents on food stamps through June, a 63 percent increase from June 2008, according to Terry Field, spokesman for the Department of Children and Families’ Suncoast Region. “That’s the highest percentage of increase ever seen in a single year in Manatee County,” Field said.
|
| @ Bradenton Herald | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0320 EDST
|
| Lee County, Ft. Myers; lots don't cost much
|
| Undeveloped property being sold at an up to 90 percent discount. That's what the market looks like these days for undeveloped property in Southwest Florida - especially if it's already zoned for development. So far, it's mainly investors on the buying end as a glut of unsold or foreclosed-on houses keeps down home prices, said Fort Myers-based real estate broker Randy Thibaut of Land Solutions. An actual builder typically can't compete with existing inventory.
|
| @ Ft. Myers News Press | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0330 EDST
|
| Housing hope builds across much of nation
|
| U.S. home starts rise as 1st-time-buyer tax credits stir interest; Chicago data dismal. The national level of building activity remains about 50 percent below where it was a year ago.
|
| @ Chicago Tribune | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0345 EDST
|
| New ethanol plant a shot in the arm to Ford county's, Gibson City's; economy
|
| The $166 million facility on 84 acres includes 20,000 yards of concrete; 1.2 million feet of electrical wiring and 1,144 tons of steel. The plant's economic impact is large because it employs 47 people and is a shot in the arm to the Ford County economy, still reeling from recent job losses, including those caused by this summer's shut down of the Baltimore Air Coil plant in nearby Paxton.
|
| @ Bloomington, Il Pantagraph | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0400 EDST
|
| New Residential Construction up in June
|
| Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 563,000. This is 8.7 percent above the revised May rate of 518,000 but is 52.0 percent below the June 2008 estimate of 1,174,000.
|
| @ U.S. Census Bureau | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0415 EDST
|
| Looking for a bargain dinner? Try lobster
|
| At a wholesale price of $2.25, the once costly crustacean is a treat for consumers but a crisis for Maine lobstermen. It's cheaper than hot dogs.
|
| @ Fortune Magazine | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0419 EDST
|
|
|
| Europe Thumps U.S., Again
|
| On present trends, most of Europe will soon have lower income tax rates than most of America. And now the European Union is stealing another competitive march on Washington, this time on a free trade deal with the world's 13th largest economy, fast-growing South Korea. Last week Brussels and Seoul finished the outline of a new trade agreement, and the two sides will now write up the technical language to codify it. As for the pending U.S.-Korea trade agreement, Congress has done . . . nothing.
|
| @ Wall Street Journal | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0646 EDST
|
| Sweden's Public Downsizing
|
| Think the answer to America's problems is bigger government? Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg has seen the result up close and says it's not pretty for the economy or investors. Anders Borg has a message for those who look to government to take over health care, rescue the financial system and run troubled corporations: I have seen the future--and it doesn't work.
|
| @ Forbes | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0652 EDST
|
| U.K. Property Asking Prices Rebounded in July
|
| British home sellers raised asking prices this month to meet increased demand from buyers. The average cost of a home rose 0.6 percent to 227,864 pounds ($372,000) after falling 0.4 percent in June. Prices in London had the first annual gain of the year so far.
|
| @ Bloomberg News | Posted: 07/20/09 at 0655 EDST
|
| -30- |
