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This over-hyped annual ritual involves inexperienced reporters cribbing the guesstimates of NY-based analysts about the prospects for Southern California merchants. Good luck sorting that out.
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Mark Lacter covered business, the economy and more here from 2006 until his death on Nov. 13, 2013.
The entire LA Biz Observed archive — more than 10,000 blog posts by Mark —
remains online and available.
October 2013
This over-hyped annual ritual involves inexperienced reporters cribbing the guesstimates of NY-based analysts about the prospects for Southern California merchants. Good luck sorting that out.
Obama's misleading comments show either an appalling ignorance of his own plan or a willful distortion of the law's confusing facets. Either way, it's not great. However, it's not the whole story.
Virgin America's preparations for catastrophe have never been so entertaining. Too bad the airline needs more than a floor show.
The policies typically provide scant coverage - frequently lacking maternity care or mental health benefits, for example. Dumping them was one of the ideas behind the Affordable Care Act - or as Suzanne Somers claims in a WSJ oped, the nation's march toward socialism.
New bosses, in politics or business, are often conflicted about who to keep. The obvious reflex is to select your own people, but many of these jobs require an institutional knowledge that can take months or even years to pick up.
Rescue crews are giving themselves until the end of next month to get the operation in mostly workable order. In today's media whirl, that's several lifetimes. Meanwhile, the California health care site seems to be working, more or less.
Mayor Garcetti wants to open the process, but transparency is not so much the issue; it's context. Knowing that L.A. gets 28 percent of its revenue through property taxes is a useless data point unless we can find out why it's higher than previous years.
If the salmonella contamination at Foster Farms tells consumers anything, it's that we're all pretty much on our own when it comes to food safety.
No more non-stops between Los Angeles and Singapore, part of a cutback by Singapore Airlines on ultra long-range routes. Also gone is the Newark to Singapore run, which at nearly 19 hours (yikes!) had been the world's longest non-stop flight.
Some might find the former mayor's advisory roles to be infuriating, but is it any different than an actor or athlete getting paid ungodly amounts to peddle somebody's golf clubs or soda pop?
Gallup poll finds that 58 percent favor legalization and 39 percent oppose, the broadest approval since the pollster start asking the question in 1969 (only 12 percent backed legalization that year).
Not horrible, not wonderful - September's numbers were a tad disappointing, with only 148,000 jobs added to the rolls. But the unemployment rate did drop to 7.2 percent from 7.3 percent the previous month.
It's safe to assume that would-be applicants to the Covered California program, as well as the other insurance exchanges, are simply giving up trying to enroll in a health plan. That's not political spin - it's the cold reality of what's been a disaster.
Southern California's economy is in pretty good shape, with most of the effects likely to be short term and marginal.
Covered California processed 94,500 applications as of Oct. 16, roughly half of the applications being reported from the 16 states (and the District of Columbia) that have their own insurance markets. But what does that mean?
September home sales and prices are down a bit from the previous month, according to Dataquick, but that's not such a bad thing.
Everyone knows that older concrete buildings are especially vulnerable in an earthquake unless they're reinforced. The problem is that retrofitting can be very expensive. What to do?
House Speaker John Boehner apparently has agreed to bring the Senate-crafted measure to a floor vote, which means that most all Democrats would join with enough Republicans to pass the thing and avert crisis.
Their efforts to de-fund the Affordable Care Act are not going to work, and yet they continue to push, making a bad situation even worse.
What we're seeing play out has nothing to do with policy. It's all about face-saving.
High-end home sales, which had been lagging in the early days of the housing recovery, are making up for lost time. Big-time investors like Colony Capital are getting interested.
Publisher Aaron Kushner insists that he doesn't care whether people read the Register in print or online - just so long as they're subscribers. What he refuses to accept is that the traditional subscription model is dying.
Well, breakthrough is pushing it, but investors were determined to look at the bright side. The Dow finished up 323 points, to 15,126.
This is not much of a government town, so the impact has involved inconvenience more than dislocation. But should the impasse drag out for several more weeks there's bound to be an economic cost.
Here's the first big indication that Freedom Communications and its CEO, Aaron Kushner, have designs on the Southern California market that go beyond the flagship OC Register.
Much will be made of her becoming the first woman Fed chairman, as it should, but the real story is what a great selection this is - a remarkable pivot from what would have been a terrible selection in Larry Summers.
So a bunch of dudes are about to wreck the global economy and then hand the job of putting it back together to the first female fed chair.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 9, 2013
This is the month when TV stations will decide whether to renew the daytime talker after the summer of 2014, and the outlook is not good.
So much for Wall Street ho-humming the debt ceiling issue. The Dow fell 160 points, which means that the blue chip index has dropped around 1,000 points in the past three weeks.
Which means that the mayor, along with his new film czar, Tom Sherak, will have a hard time convincing state lawmakers that Hollywood needs additional giveaways.
Most everybody told me that Knatz did not have a great relationship with the port tenants. The laundry list of gripes ranges from an often-difficult lease negotiation process with both large and small tenants to a limited focus on sales and marketing.
The ongoing recovery has been marked by a lack of churn - that is fewer workers are quitting and fewer are being hired. Economists are paying attention.
Wish I knew. Here's another case where the embarrassing dearth of news coverage about the port leaves a big hole.
Sure, the business tax can use an overhaul (once somebody figures it out) and it's still tough to get permits from the Department of Building and Safety. But overall the city of L.A. is quite accommodating - probably too much so.
If it were only a matter of heavier-than-expected traffic, the problems would be easy to resolve. But the site is asked to accomplish many complicated functions.
The rules and promises House Speaker John Boehner makes are not their problem, they've decided. They're not going to save him.
There's no telling what might happen if the U.S. government is forced to default because a few dozen crazies in the House refuse to lift the debt ceiling. But risk-averse bankers are preparing for the worst.
It might not seem that way in many parts of town, but payroll jobs grew 3.8 percent in 2012, which is the sharpest increase since 2005 and nearly double the national rate.
For what it's worth, conventional wisdom on Wall Street is that a deal will be hammered out before too much damage is done.
Mark Lacter
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.The multi-talented Mark Lacter
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