For Better - Jeff Thredgold / Tea Leaf

It’s nice for a change to be able to talk about an American economy that is, for the moment, getting stronger. After growing at a truly pathetic real (inflation adjusted) annual rate of less than 0.9% during 2011’s first six months, the economy grew at a revised 2.0% real annual rate during the third quarter.

Property Taxes & Falling Values Part I - Howard Voyles / HousingMatrix.com

The Cleveland Fed just released a study on the impact of falling property values on municipal finance.

This is a subject we have from several points of view over the past months and this report brings it home for communities surrounding Cleveland, a lesson for all communities.

Score One for the Brits - Rodney Johnson / HSDent (12/19/11)

Ten days ago the European Community (EC) met in an effort to hash out a deal on saving the euro.  The meeting in and of itself is interesting because the euro is the currency of only 17 countries in what is called the euro zone, which is a subset of the 27 countries in the EC.  One of the largest and most influential members of the EC is Great Britain, who chose not to join the common currency, instead retaining its autonomy when it comes to monetary policy.

Domestic ABCs - Jeff Thredgold / Tea Leaf (12/13/11)

This week’s Tea Leaf is our semi-annual alphabetic view of the U.S. economy. Global ABCs will soon follow…

America—economic growth is likely to continue at just better than a snail’s pace, especially when considering the massive amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus in the economy. Still, the U.S. economy, for the moment, is improving while Europe, China, and much of the world slows

Budget Deficits—I’m old enough to remember President Gerald Ford holding a news conference in the mid-1970s. He used a pointer and a large chart to explain why the nation might run a budget deficit as high as $40 billion that year. We now do that every 11 days