Anirban Basu Chairman & CEO of Sage Policy Group, Inc
Maryland Gained Momentum Late Last Year
For much of last year, Maryland’s economic performance was among the worst in the nation. For instance, year-over-year job growth in the state was in negative territory or close to zero for most of the summer. But like the balance of the nation, economic performance began to materially improve toward the tail end of the year. For the 12 months ending in November 2011, employment in the Free S...
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This was supposed to be a decent year for job growth in Maryland. With the nation’s economy now in recovery and adding jobs, positive base realignment effects, cyber-security, healthcare, higher education, the Port of Baltimore, BWI, retail and other industry drivers, expectations were probably higher coming into the year than at any point since 2007.
But the state’s job engine has generally sputtered. According to the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor S...
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Focus Shifts from Growth to Inflation
Economy Now Enjoys Self-Sustaining Momentum
Coming into 2011, economists remained largely fixated on the inadequacy of demand for labor, housing, commercial real estate and other aspects of economic life. Economists have been busily pouring over reams of data regarding senior bank loan officer attitudes, consumer credit availability and other indicia of credit market thawing. The conventional wisdom has been that until banks begin lending more aggressively...
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