A Stern Glance

Home prices continued to drop as the economic downturn deepened further in October, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes, a closely watched gauge of U.S. home prices, with home prices in the Sun Belt continuing to be hit hardest.
“The bear market continues; home prices are back to their March 2004 levels,” said David M. Blitzer, [...]

New orders for long-lasting manufactured goods fell 1 percent in November, a less severe drop than anticipated though it followed a steeply revised plunge in October orders, according to the Commerce Department
The Department estimates that October orders plummeted by 8.4 percent instead of 6.9 percent it previously reported, for the biggest monthly decline since a [...]

U.S. consumers cut spending for a fifth straight month during November and their incomes shrank, according to a government report today that pointed to deepening recessionary pressures.
The Commerce Department said spending contracted by 0.6 percent after falling even more steeply by 1 percent in October. Incomes contracted by 0.2 percent after a slight 0.1 percent [...]

Existing-home sales, including single-family, town homes, condominiums and co-ops, fell 8.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.49 million units in November from a downwardly revised level of 4.91 million in October, and are 10.6 percent below the 5.02 million-unit pace in November 2007.
Total housing inventory at the end of November rose 0.1 [...]

U.S. consumer confidence rose in December due to declining prices, although job losses and falling income continued to weigh on sentiment, the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers showed today.
The survey’s final index reading of confidence for December rose to 60.1 from November’s 55.3 and was above economists’ expectations of 58.6. December’s final reading was [...]

The economy shrank at a 0.5 percent annual pace in the third quarter as expected after consumers and businesses cut spending and the country’s recession gathered steam, government data showed on Tuesday.
The U.S. economy entered a recession last December and many economists think this deepened after the failure of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in [...]

The Holiday Season is decked in black (as in the color of ink) for savvy PR pros. They know this season represents one of the easiest times of year to generate media attention for their clients, especially with stories that might be considered marginal by reporters at other times.
While many PR firms view this period [...]

Wynn Resorts Ltd. CEO Steve Wynn says his swanky $2.3 billion Encore casino — which he opened Monday amid a market that’s battering casino, travel and other consumer companies — is about perfecting the basics.
“Better service, nicer rooms, better lighting,” Wynn told The Associated Press. “Themes that are corny get old quickly, but real and [...]

2009 looks to be an economic disaster because the political gridlock will prevent the kind of legislative changes necessary to ameliorate our growing economic problems.
The housing downturn is getting worse, price declines are accelerating and are beginning to affect consumer spending. Housing prices are down nationwide about 12 percent, but could fall 30 percent which [...]

You don’t sit at your desk all day, waiting for a phone call from journalists. Similarly, reporters don’t sit at their desks waiting for news about your company. In fact, given today’s smaller news staffs (because of reduced advertising revenues) and their increasingly busy workdays, there’s a very good chance reporters may not even see [...]