Business columnist Jon Talton lays the gloom on thick in The Seattle Times today. His brief goes this way: real estate mess is worsening, Boeing strike is dragging on, Microsoft is reconsidering its hiring plans, exports are facing global recession. No silver linings anywhere. The column is a reminder of the old saw that the Puget Sound economy always performs either twice as well as the nation's or twice as badly.
A respected economic observer was moved to differ, though not to be public about it. His chin-up list of good factors goes this way:
Most people are working. Most mortgages and even credit cards are current. The gov-mint is throwing everything it has at the problem. Manufacturing in the U.S. has not been hollowed out. We still make a lot of stuff, just with fewer people, we're more efficient. Exports are booming. People will still want to visit grandma. Travel is one of the first choices for discretionary income.
What would make me feel a lot better would be if I thought the business leadership of the area was meeting to address the coming hard times. In most American cities, the CEOs of the top local companies fairly regularly meet to talk about the big public issues (research universities, crime problems, tax structure, major initiatives like transit or cleaning up Puget Sound). They get to know and trust each other. They do not delegate these critical civic tasks to their vice presidents for community relations. And they make sure that the political leadership also takes part and gets to trust and guide the civic-mindedness of these leaders.
For some reason, this has stopped happening in this region, though there was a spurt of it in the effort to save the Sonics, where three top CEOs got together (and took a pasting). Now, with some of the pillars of the local business community being pulled down or sold (Safeco, Washington Mutual), it is a ripe opportunity for the new economy to step into the gap (Amazon, Microsoft, Gates Foundation, University of Washington). We can't just leave it to the folks who want to visit grandma.
