Economy

You Are the Proton

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WHEN I WAS EMERGING (RELUCTANTLY) into adulthood, I wondered if I would live long enough to see the boundaries between religion and science come down like the Berlin Wall. I did.  Consider the phenomenon of quantum entanglement: Electrons have a property called “spin”, and it can be “up spin” or “down spin.” When two electrons …

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How bad can it be?

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by John Mattingly

What’s the big political issue of the day?

“It’s The Economy, stupid.” – a phrase used by Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush.

But what is The Economy? As my previous three articles that touched the elusive hide of the economic elephant should indicate, I haven’t the foggiest idea what politicians, talking heads, experts, analysts, and especially economists mean when they force these two words together.

When we talk about The Economy, we’re usually talking about our favorite person, ourselves. We tend to compare our present situation to more favorable times or situations in the past. We seldom compare ourselves to desperate times, with the notable exception of a few old timers who lived through the Great Depression. Those folks have perspective, but they are a dwindling minority, now being somewhere north of their 80s. And when was the last time an octogenarian ran for office, wrote an economic non-fiction best seller, or appeared on CNBC?

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The Geo-seasonal Vagaries of Custer County Business

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by Hal Walter

It’s perhaps an irony that the Feed Barn and The Feed Store both recently closed their doors here in Custer County.

The Feed Barn was a 25-year-old livestock and pet feed business founded by a longtime ranching family. It has changed hands twice since it opened, and I am one of a handful of local residents who can remember buying feed from original owners Randy and Claricy Rusk at their location north of town.

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Laid Off

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Column by Hal Walter

Economy – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

AS THE SNOW BEGAN TO FALL, I built a pretty big bonfire in the fire pit near the house. Since the ground was already covered with snow and more fresh powder was falling it was safe to light up some branches and old papers that had been accumulating like so much psychic baggage.

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Hard Times, Easy Money

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Column by John Mattingly

Economy – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS I’ve received an astounding number of offers to show me how to make money in/from this current financial crisis. Some of the more interesting are:

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Comparative cabinology

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Letter from Slim Wolfe

Economy – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors,

I’m always pleased when someone — most recently Simon Halburian of Saguache — takes the trouble to dispute some comments I’ve made in these pages. In this case the objections seem to be well-grounded in the gospel of St. Alan Greenspan. Hopefully Mr. Halburian hasn’t gambled all his holdings on these antediluvian theorems, or he may find himself wiling away many happy hours on line at homeless shelters and soup kitchens — a joy which the Greenspans and other leading thinkers and economists will probably never embrace, themselves.

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Christmas was soft, but it could have been worse

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

It could be a much, much worse winter — namely one with no snow. Instead, records for December snowfall from Telluride to Aspen Highlands tumbled. And the holiday schedule this year allowed for people to excuse two weeks of vacation.

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Ginn says Minturn project unaffected by bankruptcies

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Things have gone down the toilet for the Ginn Co. at several of its real-estate projects in the Southeast. Does that mean that its plans for a high-end, 1,700-unit project on former mining properties in the Minturn area are headed for the same place?

No, says Ryan Julison, the company spokesman. “Every project is its own legal entity,” he tells the Vail Daily.

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What is money?

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Column by John Mattingly

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Back in the mid-1980s I was in New York City working with various financiers on omnibus loan re-structuring bailouts for farmers, who, at that time, were going through the same general credit crisis now playing out broadly (and with much more attention) in today’s world economy. I was a principal in a small firm, Judson Securities, which sought funding for a program we called EIO, Equity Investment Opportunity, a fund that, with modest success, matched ag-friendly investors with good farmers.

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Do we manage money or does it manage us?

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Essay by Martha Quillen

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Although they are clearly human creations, something that we invented and that we presumably control, I tend toward the idea that no one really manages them, or even truly understands them. Human inventions or not, global monetary systems have grown and evolved beyond our control.

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The velocity of money

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Letter from Simon Halburian

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

In his “presidential platform” letter in the December issue, Slim Wolfe says “No more war, no more NATO, overseas bases, aggression, or aid, no Pentagon, no space program, no paranoid bullying. I ain’t afraid.”

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The high end is feeling the pinch, too

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Telluride expects a hard winter, with real estate development and sales shuddering to a near stop and tourism as encouraging as dyspepsia.

Bookings are down 25 percent from last winter, a stellar season. The more apt comparison, says The Telluride Watch, is the 10 to 12 percent drop of the longer-term average.

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Times were also bad in the late 1980s

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

No doubt about it, times are tough. But they’ve been tough before, and not that long ago. In most destination ski resorts, the real estate market skidded downhill in the early 1980s and never fully recovered for the better part of the decade.

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Even biggest gates not immune to downturn

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

The Yellowstone Club, founded in 1999, soon became a metaphor for high-end exclusivity in the mountain valleys of the West. The ski trails were immaculate and private. Homes cost up to $20 million. Members and their guests flew into nearby Bozeman, about an hour away, on private jets.

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How to survive the lean times

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Essay by Jane Goetze

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

In 1976, circumstances beyond my control forced me into temporary homelessness. For six months, I alternated between relying on the couches of friends and camping out in my car.

With the proper gear, it’s surprising how well you can fend for yourself. Of course, it helps to live in a region of the country with a tourist economy; in fact, if it weren’t for the wealthy tourists who head for Aspen, Colorado, Park City, Utah, and Sun Valley, Idaho, we might all be homeless.

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After 8 years of working more to earn less, it was time for a change

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Column by Hal Walter

Economy – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN POLITICALLY UNILATERAL Custer County, Sen. John McCain beat Barack Obama 1,668 to 914. That makes us sort of like Georgia with better scenery and fewer Confederate flags.

I’m actually a registered Republican but voted for only one of the party’s candidates this year. I changed my political affiliation a few years ago when I realized there was no other way to have any voice in local politics. Before that, I had been a Democrat, a Libertarian, and I believe was registered as independent for a while.

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Wall Street, Main Street, Dirt Roads

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Column by John Mattingly

Economy – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

WE’VE HEARD A LOT lately about Wall Street and Main Street, about the financial economy and the “real economy.” The news has been filled with the worries of PLOPs (People Living On Pavement).

Very little, however, has been said about those of us who don’t live on a street, whose address is on a county road or star route and whose livelihood comes from dirt.

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The real-estate boom is over in Jackson Hole

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The state of the real estate market in Jackson Hole has been in dispute in recent weeks. A study by a California-based firm found that the median home price in Teton County had dropped 9 percent in the last year. But David Viehman, a local appraiser and real estate agent who has studied the market for a number of years, says the Californians crunched the numbers in ways that don’t necessarily make sense.

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Real estate and county politics

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Population growth and development are at the top of issues in the county commissioner races in Eagle County. The county is bisected by I-70 from Vail Pass to Glenwood Canyon, but also includes a portion of Aspen’s mid-valley commutershed.

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Did $4 gasoline cause a slow summer in Salida?

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Brief by Central Staff

Economy – October 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

We note with sorrow the closing of the West End Café at the corner of First and G streets in Salida. From what we heard, business was just too slow this summer to sustain operations through the winter.

Indeed, we heard a lot about a summer with lower sales. One gallery said business was down about $7,000 from last year, and another put its slide at $10,000. Yet the town seemed about as busy as ever.

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Real estate continues to skid in Aspen, Jackson Hole

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The real estate skid continues in mountain towns. Sales reports from June document continued sluggishness in the Aspen and Jackson Hole markets, at least when compared to the previous three years. Sales volume in total dollars was about half of what it was going into the Fourth of July weekend last year.

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Hunters and gatherers in the 21st century

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Column by George Sibley

Economy – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

FOR A CHANGE, I’m not writing from the Upper Gunnison. My partner Maryo — in celebration of one of those decadal birthdays — wanted to go to Finland partly for nostalgic reasons (she and her family spent a year there when she was one decade old), and we both decided it might be interesting to go there and to the rest of those northern countries because they seemed to come closest to exemplifying an idea that is totally oxymoronic to America: Intelligent Industrial Democracy.

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Let them eat cake — and have it, too

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Column by George Sibley

Economy – June 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

LIKE EVERYWHERE ELSE IN America, we in the Upper Gunnison part of Central Colorado are concerned about the economy. We talk about the national economy, of course, but we talk about it the same way we talk about the spring weather — like it or not, it’s something we can’t do much about (although our comments and complaints affirm the solidarity of the trickled-upon). We talk about the local economy with more passion and less solidarity, and have at least the illusion that it is somehow “ours.”

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Officials insist foreclosure rate is not so high

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Brief by Allen Best

Economy – May 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Newspapers in the mountain towns of Colorado keep looking for evidence of the tsunami of housing foreclosures hitting their communities. The real estate market has definitely slowed down, but nobody seems to find a wall of foreclosures about to crash.

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The Stupid Economy

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Column by George Sibley

Economy – April 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

“It’s the economy, stupid!” James Carville hung that statement in Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign headquarters to remind everyone what the election was all about, and it’s now emerging again as the message from us voters to those competing to be leaders of the flock. But today, I think I would use a variation on Carville’s statement:

It’s the stupid economy!

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An unwanted national ranking?

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Brief by Central Staff

Economy – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Saguache County made the national rankings in a magazine in late December, but it’s probably not something anybody wants to brag on. It was listed in the Dec. 10 edition of The Economist, a weekly magazine based in England which focuses on “international politics and business news and opinion.”

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Getting by in the boondocks

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Essay by Martha Quillen

Economy – November 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine

SOMETIMES, we in the hinterlands are America’s true sophisticates, far more experienced in the ways of the world than presumably savvy suburbanites.

And one thing America’s rural communities are intimately familiar with is economic decline. Here in Central Colorado we look back at our history of boom and bust with pride, and even take satisfaction in the fact that the busts have prevailed. Most of us have no great love for development, growth, progress and industry. We prefer old-fashioned, rustic places that are small and unspoiled.

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Outsource to the outback?

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Brief by Central Staff

Economy – August 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

American companies keep looking for cheap labor and locations for back-office operations like call centers. Many have tried India, and have suffered on the public-relations front.

So, according to an article in the June 9 Wall Street Journal, they’re looking at out-sourcing in rural America.

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Don’t believe them

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Letter from Edward Hawkins

Economy – October 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

Don’t believe them

Martha:

Great letter from the editor in September issue: “Divided and Conquered.” But I dasn’t let you continue life believing all those quotations, information and other junk from Kevin Phillips, Donald Bartlett, James B. Steele, and others. But I rather like the info derived from Kiyosaki, and I’m here to tell you that the middle class is alive and well in America. Education, hard work, attention to saving and willingness to let the “Joneses” get so far ahead that they’re out of sight and not worth trying to keep up with will put you in the middle class every single time…..nice and cozy.

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Divided and conquered

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Essay by Martha Quillen

Economy – September 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

ORDINARY WORKING PEOPLE can’t afford to live in Aspen, but that’s okay; Aspen is grander than diamond toothpicks. It’s a little more sobering, however, to realize that most families couldn’t really afford to move to Salida these days, either. Salida is a gorgeous resort town, though, so that’s not entirely surprising.

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My changing West

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Essay by Kirk Littlefield

Economy – May 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

IS THE WEST changing for the worse or is it simply changing?

Growing up, I had the tendency to believe the former: The mountains that I loved were going to be ruined forever by the endless surge of newcomers.

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Americans looking for hide-outs

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Brief by Central Staff

Economy – January 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine

The national economy was already slumping before Sept. 11, and the events since that day certainly didn’t help matters.

So did it mean a decline in the sales of certain luxury items, like second homes in remote rural areas?

Apparently not, according to a story in the Oct. 19 edition of the Wall Street Journal. The demand is not declining, it said, but rising.

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Slow times don’t need to be hard times

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Letter from Slim Wolfe

Economy – September 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editor,

It seems just a bit disingenuous to rely on population growth as some sort of silver bullet, or to whine about a slow economy. Watching the productive musculature of mines, ranches, and railroad erode into the comparative flab of tourism and tract homes has been painful. A few short years earning a buck in new constrction were enough to convince me that I might as well be sawing off the limb I was standing on. Watching the invader hordes swarm up from the flatlands I guess I had some inkling of how the Serbs came to hate the Turks. That was in 1980. Now the flatland Turks have pretty much overrun everything north of Centerville, via South Park, and another army advances through Coaldale up the canyon encouraged by the conjurings of some of our realtors and businesses.

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