Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Are we in a recession because that one seller on craigslist says we are?



Are we in a recession? (New York Times)

Hogs and hoboes, gloom and doom


Catching up on this week's New York.

There's James Cramer's column:

What will New York look like a year from now? The answer: bad and probably worse, and perhaps downright catastrophic. Three degrees of awful.

And an interview with financial historian Niall Ferguson:

I’m in Venice now, which used to be a financial center and is now a tourist center. And the nightmare is that a crisis of this magnitude will turn New York from a financial center into a tourist center. The good news is that London seems to be handling this crisis slightly worse than New York. My sense is that the great financial crisis we’re living through will fundamentally tilt the balance of the world from West to East. Sovereign-wealth funds will matter much, much more because they’ve got the money and we haven’t. New York isn’t quite Venice yet, but I certainly am quite relieved that I don’t own a large block of real estate in Manhattan right now.

And there's a piece on that newish place on 7th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue that sells fancy sliced hog:

It fills the shop with a lovely aroma that wafts its way down the block, causing startled passersby to lift their noses and sniff the air like cartoon hoboes on the trail of a windowsill pie. Resistance is futile.

Unless you're a vegetarian.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Despite economic downturn in city, expect four more American Apparel stores


In a piece titled "City Feels the Economic Pinch, but It’s Only a Pinch, So Far" in the Times today, Kathryn S. Wylde, chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, described the City's current economic climate: “[I]t’s not a crash like the Great Depression. It is a gradual letting the air out of the balloon, an economy that is deflating. And that could be a process that’s 2 years or 10 years for New York.”

Meanwhile, as the article notes, some businesses are hurting while some chains are continuing with plans to open more stores.

Take the case of American Apparel . . . It has opened two stores in New York City in 2008 and plans to open four more before year end, according to Adrian Kowalewski, the company’s director of corporate finance and development.

“We haven’t seen anything but an increase in our business, despite the slowdown in the overall economy,” Mr. Kowalewski said. “Many of our customers are young, urban dwellers, and so are not as exposed directly to increases in fuel prices or the meltdown in the housing market."