Downtown has just a single construction crane left on the job, at the Ritz-Carlton tower at L.A. Live. How's that for a sign of the recession. "In the summer of 2007, one could look from L.A. Live and see a half-dozen of cranes within just a few blocks," Eric Richardson observes at Blog Downtown. New projects aren't going up, despite fresh hype about Korean-backed skyscrapers coming downtown. About those, Steven Mikulan asks at L.A. Daily: "Have the Koreans found a way to buck the global recession? Or are they just out of their minds?" I'm going with wishful thinking, fanned by media enthusiasm.

Photo: Eric Richardson