(Community Matters) A day of mixed messages on the economy – overall, especially discouraging.
Nationally:
- the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee said it may be necessary to nationalize some banks. The White House sought to ease concerns on bank privatization.
- “I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world,” said Paul Volcker, a top aide to Obama.
- U.S. gold futures shot to a seven-month high above $1,000 an ounce, putting the benchmark gold contract within reach of the record high at $1,033.90 hit last April.
- “We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”
All this on the same day that 2 out of 3 local conversations were much more positive. Two well-placed, Austin business executives expressed their optimism that we would see improvement by 4Q09, citing inventories of consumer products and absorption of local residential real estate. The third didn’t cite any reasons for optimism yet guessed sometime in 2010 we’d see an uptick.
I mentioned serveral times yesterday that Austin may have a unique opportunity to bank foreclosed residential property for affordability. Wish someone would put together a $20 – $50mm package; I just don’t have the bandwidth this year.
Community Matters 