The interior monologue of Gov. Jay Inslee, just prior to his recent speech outlining his plan to convince Boeing to retain commercial airplane production in Washington state:
For those looking for signs that the economic recovery we’ve been promised for five years might finally be taking hold, and that the Tacoma renaissance we’ve been promised for even longer might be back on track, last week’s entries on The News Tribune’s Biz Buzz blog made for uplifting reading.
Barring the occurrence of mass hypnosis and conversion of David Stern, the NBA owners and the Sacramento ownership group planning to buy the Kings, Seattle-area sports fans will not be watching men’s professional basketball beginning this autumn. Or, more than likely, next autumn. And perhaps not for many autumns after that.
Before his untimely passing, George Weyerhaeuser Jr. compiled an admirable résumé of community involvement as well as professional accomplishment at the family business that bears his name.
Geography had little to do with establishing Western Washington as one of the world’s great centers for the commercial aerospace industry. The happy historical coincidences and accidents that put Bill Boeing and his interest in aviation here, instead of somewhere else, as well as the decisions, gambles and mistakes that made his namesake company a dominant player in the industry while others faded, were not a function of place the way that the forest-products industry grew up here because that’s where the trees were.
In this business, there’s a risk in relying too much on reporting by anecdote and metaphor, but as the great business consultant Yogi Berra once noted, “You can observe a lot by watching.”
Who would want to buy a bank these days? The margins are awful, the regulatory cost and hassle of operating keep rising, Ben Bernanke seems determined to drive interest rates (and revenue received on loans) to zero, not that people show much inclination to borrow anyway, and everyone blames you for triggering the recession, even if you were nowhere near the scene of the crime.
Don’t mind me.
The saddest news of the week (at least in stories not involving some sort of human misbehavior) was the story of the closing of Affairs, the local chocolate and dessert purveyor.
Business management and organization philosophies are as susceptible to fads and crazes as popular dances.
The most popular method of assessing the stock market’s performance, past and potential, is to look at data, and if that’s your approach, you’re in luck – only sports can rival stocks for generating towers of numbers to ponder.
How can you know where you want to go if you don’t have some idea of what you’ll find when you get there?
Every so often a remark made in passing jumps out from a news story to smack the reader, prompting a response of “that can’t really be so.”
Updated version of an old joke about another profession that has on occasion been held in disrepute:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – at least for politicians and those in the road-construction business – that festive season of handing out presents, paid for by voters and motorists, to various regions and corners of the state.
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