This morning's Standard-Examiner edition delivers more unsettling news on the local economic front:
• Local job outlook may be changing - Study shows employers may be cutting jobs in ‘09This morning's story of course follows yesterday's grim news:
• Sales tax revenues grim - Top of Utah cities hope property tax numbers look betterThere's been a persistent meme regularly repeated around Ogden and environs, to the effect that the local economy is "special" -- and somehow immune to the recession that's crushing the rest of the country. While sensible folks realise that we're ALL caught up in the world-wide economic mess, for reasons unknown, this morning's Std-Ex article resorted to Emerald City's most mind-numbed Chamber of Commerce cheerleader for inspirational backgound quotes:
“This survey is primarily measuring optimism. It’s not hard numbers,” said Dave Hardman, president of the Ogden/Weber Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a pulse on emotion.” Just nine months ago, a Manpower survey gave Ogden-Clearfield the 10thbest outlook in the nation. At that time, 47 percent of those surveyed said they would be adding jobs in the upcoming quarter, and none said they would be making cuts.We suppose there were no actual economists or other economic experts available for a Jeff Demoss interview. Thus we get retired career ZCMI necktie salesman grinnin' Dave Hardman instead.
Hardman acknowledged that the economic climate has shifted since then, but said the local business community will weather the storm.
“The reality is, there is some real trepidation right now, especially on the sales side of the economy.
“People will just have to hunker down until we see some things turn.”
The Std-Ex serves its readers very poorly when it tries to softpedal the hard facts. All the evidence indicates the local economy is in for a rough ride over the next few years; and we believe the our home town newspaper should just come out and say it.
10 comments:
There's a reason the Standard softpedals the truth. The truth drives their advertizers nuts!
Forecasting gloom makes economy worse
From today's SE "Top of Utah" sidebar:
Councilwoman has back surgery
OGDEN — City Councilwoman Dorrene Jeske says she will take a break from her duties for the remainder of the month while she recovers from complications stemming from recent back surgery. Jeske hopes to resume her normal duties in January.
Get well soon, Dorrene!
Well, Rudi, the SE did run the story, emphasizing expectations of job losses locally. You may not be happy with what Cheerleader Hardman said --- [Why doesn't the Ogden-Weber Chamber just go ahead and buy him a pleated skirt, a cableknit sweater and a set of pom-poms and be done with it?] --- but the SE did run this largely downbeat story. And Hardman didn't tell us, not even once, that the Gondola was coming and would make Ogden into Aspen West. Amazing.
And to be fair, Hardman did say Ogden retail businesses [and all the rest of us for that matter] are going to have to "hunker down" until the economy turns. That pretty much diluted his attempt to pass off the bad numbers as just emotional guesswork, I thought. When reality gets so grim that even Mr. Hardman thinks he can no longer ignore it in public, we are in deep trouble.
Is Henry a Geiger want to be, or possibly "G" Train..
dorrene get well soon. you will be in my prayers.
curm
you miss the point of the topic. that being that the administration and all of his little minnions have been proceeding as though nothing was going to effect ogdens growth. all the while with the world around us is crumbling. their lack of attention has cause our city to unwisely continue to spend money as though our city would be uneffected by the bigger picture.
imho this acknowledgemnent is good news for the residents.
hopefully now the city council will have the sense to put a stop to the next business development scheme or capital budget deversion that godfrey comes up with. hopefully before the city has to cut all services to its residents because its too financially strapped to do anything more than pay debt service to all these gradiose schemes.
curm not everyone dislikes godfreys management of this city simply because he wants to build a gondola. he has plenty of other reasons why residents should be concerned about his management.
Disgusted,
you sure got that one right. Virtually everything the little punk has touched is a loser. He has cost the tax payers of Ogden at least a hundred million dollars. It will take many years for out fair city to recover from the hole he and his circle of empty suits have dug.
Disgusted:
You wrote: curm not everyone dislikes godfreys management of this city simply because he wants to build a gondola. he has plenty of other reasons why residents should be concerned about his management.
No argument there, and I've been raising questions about his business judgment here for a long time, as have others.
But one point of Rudi's post was another attack on the SE for allegedly covering up the bad news and spinning Godfrey sunshine in its place. Just thought it worth noting that the story was definitely a downbeat one, and the SE did print it, and included Cheerleader Hardman's gloomy cautions about "hunkering down." Hard to pass all that off as blowing sunshine up.... well, as blowing sunshine. Period.
curm
my read on hardmans comments and what rudi i think was pointing out and what most people that read the article thought was that hardman tried to suggest that the data was speculative thus he tried to marginalize its consideration as to the health of the local economy.
all data of that nature is to some degree soft but its about as good a representation of whats going on as we get anywhere at this point in time in a cycle. several months after the fact when all the numbers are in then it becomes hard data but by then everyone already knows it and has felt it.
if anything manpowers numbers just prove how fast the local economy is turning. if we wait several months for those numbers to be validated the economy could look quite different by the time those become hard numbers. btw manpowers numbers are ususally pretty good indicators.
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