Economics

Less than a week from today, those Americans who did not vote early will go to the polls to vote to decide who will be the next President of the United States. Hopefully, a week from today, we will know who that person will be, either current Vice President (VP) Kamala D. Harris or former President Donald J. Trump. While I am often critical of others who vote primarily based on a single issue, I just might fit into that category for this presidential election; and that issue is the

There was mixed economic data for the Augusta Leading Economic Index (LEI) in August. As my wife says, “Give me the bad news, then cheer me up.” Residential building permits fell 8.6 percent in August to 290, the lowest monthly number this year. New data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reported that there were fewer dollars in local banks on June 30, 2024 than a year earlier. While this may represent consumer optimism and strong retail sales, it does reduce the capacity for future spending. The good news is that

The Augusta Metropolitan Statistical Area economy is in a recession, according to one indicator. The Sahm indicator hit 0.6 in August and a reading higher than 0.5 indicates a recession. The Sahm indicator is named after its creator, Claudia Sahm. The Sahm Recession Indicator signals the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to the minimum of the three-month averages from the previous 12 months. In August, the local unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent for