National Economy

A graph in last Sunday's Business section gave an incorrect figure for freight traffic at BWI Airport for the first quarter of 1997. The correct number is 77,316 pounds of freight.The Sun regrets the errors.All decade, Maryland and the Northeast have lagged near the end of the economic train. But the national economy has hitched up another locomotive this year, jammed down the throttle and wrenched acceleration even from the caboose."Clearly, right now, the Maryland economy is as strong as it's been this decade," said Mike Funk, an economist who follows the state for the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson State University.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Working to preempt a parade of Republican governors who will take the stage tonight at their party's national convention, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said here that the GOP vision for the nation's economy would "spell disaster for America's middle class" and that soon-to-be nominee Mitt Romney "doesn't have what it takes to grow this economy. " O'Malley, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, arrived in Tampa on Monday for a bevy of television and radio interviews in an attempt to counter the message voters will hear from Republicans over the next three days.

Schwartz Brothers Inc.This Lanham-based company, one of the nation's leading distributors of videocassettes and an independent distributor of recorded records, tapes and compact discs, reported yesterday that it had a net loss in the third quarter of $3,065,000, or $1.72 a share, compared with net earnings of $425,000, or 23 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.Revenue for the quarter fell 21.9 percent because of the "weakened economy, the lack...

Mass layoffs spiked in July as Maryland job growth continued to slow, a sign that the sputtering national economy is hitting home. Employers added a total of 500 jobs, with more brisk hiring in the private sector tempered by the loss of temporary Census Bureau positions, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Friday. That's the smallest increase since the state switched course from losses to gains in March, according to figures adjusted to account for seasonal changes in hiring and layoffs.

As California goes, so goes the nation. Politically, culturall and, to some extent, economically. California is not just the most populous state by far. It is an economic bellwether. And even though the nation's mid-section is prospering as the coasts stay in the doldrums, California is still an engine that can drive the national economy upward or a millstone that can drag it down.A forecast of the state's economic prospects from the University of California at Los Angeles, more pessimistic than most but also recently more accurate, thinks its economy will be bogged down for another year or two. The study expects the state's economy to slip another 1.1 percent next year and to recover only about 1.5 percent in 1994.

For a decade and a half, Maryland has tended to think itself somehow "different" from the rest of the country.At first, through most of the 1980s and especially during the recession that struck the rest of America early in the decade, being different seemed to be good news. The state won national attention for seeming to be "recession-proof" because of its many layers of federal spending, especially defense spending, which seemed fated to grow through fat years and lean.Then, when the slow-motion national recession of the 1990s coincided with the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War, Maryland's reliance on defense turned from blessing to curse.

Maryland's economy should remain healthy for the next nine months, and its strength beyond that depends on the national economy, economists at the 1999 Economic Outlook Conference said yesterday.The most telling statistic to emerge from the conference, which was sponsored by the Regional Economic Studies Institute (RESI) at Towson University, is the forecast of a 1.7 percent employment growth rate in the state despite an expected national slowdown, the economists said.The employment growth rate for 1998 is projected to be 2.1 percent, and that was for a year with a robust national economy, the economists said.

Maryland's unemployment rate edged up from 3.6 percent in May to 4 percent in June as the national economy's slowdown continued to infect the state. The 4 percent unemployment rate for June was lower than 4.7 percent for the nation as a whole for the same month, both on an unadjusted basis. It also was lower than the unemployment rate of 4.3 percent for Maryland in June 2000. "It's a little bit from the telecom slowdown, a little bit from the manufacturing slowdown," said Jeff Petry, an economist who follows Maryland for Economy.

The number of construction jobs in Maryland declined in the first half of the year as the nation struggled with recession, but new jobs should outnumber losses by December, according to a survey released yesterday by two state agencies. The survey is one in a series planned by the state Department of Labor, Licensing & Regulation and the Department of Business & Economic Development. "Our analysis does not support the view that the sky is falling," said Pradeep Ganguly, chief economist at the business department.

Continued moderate growth for the nation and the state was predicted yesterday, as the U.S. economy steams toward its seventh year of expansion and pulls a sometimes reluctant Maryland along with it.Mahlon Straszheim, chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Maryland College Park, said he expects Maryland to add jobs at a 1.2 percent annual rate over the next few years, barring state tax cuts or other major changes. That's slower than the 2 percent annual job growth that the country has displayed recently.

For 125 years, Baltimore has been home to Ellicott Dredges, a heavy equipment manufacturer and the world's oldest and largest builder of medium-sized cutter suction dredges, which are used for everything from harbor maintenance to beach restoration and environmental cleanups. As a manufacturer of such a specialized product, we have to look for opportunities to market anywhere there may be a demand — which is usually outside the state of Maryland and often far beyond the borders of the United States.

If any business proposition ever looked like a sure thing, betting on aging Americans, rising home values and the advantages of tax-exempt companies might have been it. For a quarter-century it paid off for John C. Erickson, who built the retirement-home chain bearing his name into a billion-dollar operation that spread from Massachusetts to Texas. Along the way he acquired a yacht and multimillion-dollar homes and started a charitable foundation that had $139 million in assets in 2007, the most recent year information is available.

The minimum wage rises from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour today, the last of a three-step increase approved by Congress two years ago in order to return some measure of relevancy to the federal standard that had been stuck at a paltry $5.15 for a decade. For the estimated 4.5 million workers who stand to benefit, this will be a cause for celebration. Others fear that what amounts to a 10 percent wage increase could not be more disastrously timed. They believe employers already suffering in a recession will have little choice but to lay off more workers.

A new economics documentary that explores rising gas, food and health care costs will be presented in theaters across the nation Thursday, including at the Bel Air Cinema 14 at 8 p.m. The live panel discussion will feature Warren Buffet, chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway; William Niskanen, chairman of the CATO Institute; Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP; and Dave Walker, president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U.S. comptroller...

The latest economic plan offered by the Bush administration takes on a variety of players in the current crisis and offers some credible reforms. But while President Bush is talking about bolstering confidence in a financial system shaken by the housing bust, there is relatively little that he has suggested that can ease the growing insecurity felt by families in Maryland and elsewhere. Tens of thousands of subprime loans to Maryland homeowners are expected to go into foreclosure in the next two years, according to a study by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

CHICAGO -- Americans have many reasons for gloom. The war in Iraq has yet to turn around, we can't agree on a solution for illegal immigration, and Lindsay Lohan isn't cute anymore. We also have one reason to be happy: the economy. But right now we're in the middle of a good funk, and we don't want to let any sunshine intrude. When it comes to the economy, the national mood is a combination of dissatisfaction and fear. A recent Gallup poll found that 66 percent of Americans think national economic conditions are "only fair" or "poor."

WASHINGTON -- In his gloomiest assessment since last winter, Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, says that the national economy has taken a turn for the worse.The economy is still growing slightly, Greenspan yesterday told a group of business executives in Providence, R.I., but "in recent weeks, it's turned demonstrably sluggish."Greenspan, however, gave no indication even indirectly of what his intentions might be on interest rates. He has recently been under increasing pressure from Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady and others in the administration to drive rates lower.

The owners of the vacant Southern Hotel on Light Street received a four-year guarantee from the city zoning board yesterday that they had until 1997 to start construction at the site.Zoning board members extended the variance, which is needed to build a $180 million, 44-story tower, after an agent for the owners said that a four-year guarantee from the city was crucial to attracting tenants in a soft market.The project, proposed two years before the commercial real estate downturn began, would be the tallest building in Baltimore.

TORONTO -- Unless every national poll here is amiss, what has been perhaps the world's winningest political party is heading for a humiliating defeat today. Stephen Harper, 46, an economist and social conservative who is writing a history of ice hockey, appears poised to lead his Conservative Party to victory over Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberal Party, something that seemed highly improbable a few weeks ago. The Liberals won the last four national elections, governing Canada for 13 years -- as the party did for three-quarters of the past century.

An economic public-relations blitz by the Bush administration yesterday included a stop at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, where Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao promoted a jobs training program and the "good news for America's workers." As it turns out, it wasn't ideal timing for the full-court press. Labor Department numbers released earlier in the day showed the nation's employers adding 108,000 jobs last month, less than expected and weaker than needed to keep up with population growth.