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The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is turning out to be a better bet than many thought at first. According to the Treasury Department, the amount of money repaid by banks and other recipients now exceeds TARP’s outstanding balance.  In a monthly report to Congress on the program, TARP repayments total $194 billion; […]

Two short words are being heard in offices that have been absent for some time.  The words are:  “I quit.”   In the last three months, more Americans have quit their jobs than were laid off, a sharp contrast with the last few years that points to a gradually thawing jobs market. Although some of […]

Is there something special in the water in Texas?  After surviving the Great Recession in relatively good shape, the Lone Star State can claim that it has more jobs than it did two years ago, as well as the lowest unemployment rate of the 10 largest states at just 8.3 percent.  According to the Texas […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is warning that – even as the nation struggles to recover from the worst recession in 75 years – Congress must deal with an “unsustainable” level of debt.  “Our nation’s fiscal position has deteriorated appreciably since the onset of the financial crisis and the recession,” Bernanke said in testimony before […]

Home Depot, NCR are greening their companies. Fortune 500 companies are increasingly using energy-saving measures in their corporate real estate.  Some firms are retrofitting warehouses to conserve energy or are applying Japanese principles to building design and operation. Home Depot, for example, has 2,245 retail stores comprising 235 million SF nationally, owns 89 percent of […]

Breakthrough ideas that change industries are increasingly coming from the developing world rather than the United States or Western Europe.  Part of this is due to the fact that the West is outsourcing more research and development to emerging markets.  Currently, Fortune 500 firms have 98 research-and-development facilities in China and an additional 63 in […]

As George Harrison said in his 1989 song, “Cheer down.”  In a move that surprised many economists, GDP growth for the 1st quarter of 2010 has been revised slightly downward – from 3.2 percent to three percent – according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  Even with the downward revision, the 1st quarter was the […]

State-owned holding company Dubai World is in talks to renegotiate $26 billion of debt and asking its banks for approval to defer loan payments.  The banks are hoping to avoid a haircut – taking less money than they are owed.  Dubai’s government also might provide a guarantee to the banks that are owned money.  Dubai […]

Washington, D.C.’s fabled Watergate Hotel – the site of the notorious 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters that set off the political scandal that toppled Richard M. Nixon’s presidency – has been sold and will be redeveloped as an “upper-upscale hotel”. According to The Wall Street Journal, Euro Capital Partners, a redevelopment specialist, […]

The end may be in sight to phase out CO2-emitting coal by 2030, according to Architecture 2030 a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization established in response to the global-warming crisis.  That conclusion comes from researchers at leading institutions such as NASA, NREL, Architecture 2030 and Columbia University. The paper issued by the institutions – titled […]