Economy's bad, but we've seen worse since '29

January 7, 2009

Trips off the tongue, doesn't it? "The worst recession since the Great Depression."

Recent columns

• Chutzpah: main symptom of bailout fever

  January 3, 2009

  Who wants to be a bailout recipient? We do! say the steel companies.

• Investment wisdom from the good old, bad old days

  December 31, 2008

  Outselling Chicken Soup for the Soul these days on Amazon.com is what one might call "Chicken Soup for the Investor's Soul." (Let's assume investors do in fact have souls.)

• History's biggest bailout needs disclosure

  December 27, 2008

  Last week the government dispatched more of your money into the abyss. Through its "Term Auction Facility," the Federal Reserve lent banks $63 billion - nearly half the cost of the entire savings and loan bailout from the 1980s, or what it takes to fight in Iraq for six months.

• Mason created global giant in a generation

  December 24, 2008

  Human lifespan being what it is, founders of great corporations rarely see their creations at their height.

• M & T Bank is the new face of U.S. finance

  December 20, 2008

  Meet the new American lender. M&T Bank Corp., which said yesterday that it will buy Baltimore's Provident Bankshares, will typify U.S. finance in the next few years.

• Biggest winner in Constellation deal is Buffett

  December 18, 2008

  "Warren Buffett loses out to the French" was the gist of several headlines yesterday on Electricite de France's deal to invest $4.5 billion in Constellation Energy Group.

• Short-term rate of 0% is just a beginning

  December 17, 2008

  Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke once famously promised - half-seriously - to drop cash from helicopters if the economy got too bad.

• Slump can be used to brighten Md.'s future

  December 13, 2008

  Add Maryland's energy future to Wall Street, the federal deficit, Washington politics, Detroit carmakers and everything else turned topsy-turvy by the financial crisis.

• EDF's offer appears to have a shot

  December 10, 2008

  Electricite de France's proposal to invest $4.5 billion in Constellation Energy Group's nuclear-generation business looks like it has a shot.

• Cold may offset heating price drop

  December 7, 2008

  The "commodity" price for Baltimore Gas & Electric's 600,000 household natural gas customers popped up a bit for December, rising from 96 cents per therm last month to $1.05 per therm. The federal Energy Information Administration blames unseasonably cold weather in much of the country for increased demand and higher prices.

• Cheap oil best gift U.S. consumers could get

  December 6, 2008

  We're all waiting for President-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan. But it doesn't look like it'll be passed until after he takes office in late January. Then it'll take months to implement.

• Constellation offer: pot of gold or elusive rainbow?

  December 4, 2008

  Like the Wizard of Oz, Electricite de France looked into the souls of everybody connected with Constellation Energy Group and offered to grant their greatest desires.

• Maryland's economy hangs on, which looks just fine

  December 3, 2008

  In case you weren't clued in by 10 consecutive months of job losses or the recent disclosure that economic output declined last summer, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced Monday that the country has been in recession for a year.

• That Constellation deal is far from done

  November 29, 2008

  Warren Buffett has agreed to pay $4.7 billion for Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group.

• Best of luck to Obama's economic gladiators

  November 25, 2008

  They were grimly silent, as if they grasped the challenge all too well. But if anybody could succeed, this was the team.

• Butcher, baker, unemployment line maker

  November 22, 2008

  In normal times, self-interest keeps society working and increases the wealth of nations. Corporations earn profits but also supply needed products. Consumers furnish their nests but also create jobs.

• Old Line lends to those it knows

  November 21, 2008

  As the economy slumps, one Maryland bank has not only stayed out of trouble but has burnished the kind of 24-karat lending record that rivals would covet even in a boom.

• Falling costs raise risk of relapse on energy use

  November 15, 2008

  David Martinez fought back when energy prices soared two years ago.

• White Marsh plant is model for reinventing auto industry

  November 12, 2008

  We financial blowhards have been proclaiming forever that Detroit automakers had to end business as usual.

• Obama needs to focus on the worker

  November 8, 2008

  It's easy to look like a hero when you walk through the door, say corporate crisis managers.

• While bailing out, U.S. is digging itself deeper into debt

  November 5, 2008

  So far, American taxpayers have put up $1 trillion to rescue banks and consumers who borrowed too much. Congress will almost certainly approve a stimulus package of $300 billion or so more.

• OK, here's why deflation is also a very bad thing

  November 2, 2008

  A reader asks: Could you explain what is bad about deflation? I understand why inflation is bad, and I presume that deflation is the opposite of inflation. If so, why is it bad if my money is increasing in value rather than decreasing?

• So, anybody out there in the market for a mall?

  November 1, 2008

  Bernard Freibaum, chief financial officer for General Growth Properties, began dumping his company stock six weeks ago.

• Bank bosses might profit by sharing in the pain

  October 29, 2008

  When taxpayers bailed out Chrysler Corp. in 1980, CEO Lee Iacocca acknowledged the extraordinary assistance with a sacrifice of his own. He cut his salary to a dollar a year and trimmed other executives' pay by up to a tenth.

• Omaha sage could get a Baltimorean 'never mind'

  October 25, 2008

  It's a beautiful idea: Constellation Energy shareholders reject the emergency merger with Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings, retake control of their company and watch the stock head back upward.

• Bipartisan budget-cuts panel deserves consideration

  October 22, 2008

  Is Comptroller Peter Franchot grandstanding with his plan for a high-powered commission to find new state spending cuts?

• High time for less fine print and more clarity

  October 18, 2008

  Can you blame Wall Street for being confused? Each mortgage security polluting our economy often holds hundreds of loans from dozens of states.

• Now on sale: the plan to bail out the U.S.

  October 15, 2008

  The selling of Washington's new, improved rescue package contains more hype than a Billy Mays Mighty Putty infomercial, but the plan just may save the country. At least this week.

• Constellation brought the near-collapse on itself

  September 19, 2008

  Would Constellation Energy's near-collapse and emergency sale have been necessary if the General Assembly hadn't resisted and ultimately quashed its planned merger with Florida's FPL Group two years ago?

• Build the natural gas terminal, but not at Sparrows Point

  August 20, 2008

  Maryland undoubtedly needs more and cheaper energy, but we're not going to do just anything to get it. We won't strip state forests for fireplace fodder. We won't reverse pollution controls on cars and power plants.

• Ferris missed a chance to act

  April 11, 2008

  David A. Dadante was making questionable stock trades almost immediately after Ferris Baker Watts took him on as a client in early 2003.

• Point's future is up to Annapolis

  March 26, 2008

  The global economy has done its part: Russia's OAO Severstal has agreed to buy the Sparrows Point steel mill and invest in badly needed upgrades.

• Primary voters have real choices

  February 8, 2008

  Critics of American politics - generally from the left - often say there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans.

• Being free of Mittal is a good thing for the Point

  February 21, 2007

  Getting sold by Mittal Steel might be the best thing to happen to Sparrows Point in a long, long time.

• Ground rent law violates the principles of due process, fair play

  December 13, 2006

  Because Deloris McNeil missed paying a $96-a-year ground rent bill, she lost the Fayette Street house she had bought for $44,500 and lived in for years. The tiny, delinquent bill morphed into creditor-seizure powers that trumped fair play, common sense and fundamental rights.

• However it's spun, Baltimore is losing a headquarters

  December 20, 2005

  As sales of key corporate citizens to out-of-town landlords go, the merger of Constellation Energy with FPL Group isn't that bad. So why are they trying to spin us like a dynamo in a heat wave?

• U.S. probes grant to city nonprofit

  October 2, 2005

  The U.S. Education Department's inspector general is investigating whether a senior official of the agency improperly helped the National Federation of the Blind win a key federal grant around the time she was discussing taking a job at the Baltimore-based nonprofit.

• Big rise in Md. tax revenue is partly credited to home sales

  July 31, 2005

  WHAT'S BEHIND the surprising spurt in Maryland tax collections and what Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. calculates is a billion-dollar budget surplus?

• Reform goes back to start on nonprofit boondoggle

  July 20, 2005

  FAITHFUL READERS know about a $2 billion federal boondoggle called the Javits-Wagner- O'Day program, which pays peanuts to disabled people working on no-bid government contracts, enriches nonprofit executives and operates with little oversight or control.

• A warning to charitable donors and a case for tougher disclosure laws on nonprofits

  June 19, 2005

  RIIIING. IT'S the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon, calling across that state. They want money "to help the blind of the area," according to a fund-raising script from 2003.

• Nonprofits seem in no big hurry to fix their problems

  March 2, 2005

  The nonprofit-industrial complex knows it has a problem.

• Chimes, other charities are object of badly needed reform

  December 5, 2004

  FEDERAL authorities have launched a tax probe of Baltimore-based Chimes Inc. and have proposed sweeping governance standards, including executive salary limits, for Chimes and other nonprofit groups that get $2 billion annually from taxpayers to employ the disabled.

• The lights start to flash at end of the blackout

  August 20, 2003

  IN ECONOMICS there's a heads for every tails, a pull for every push, and the happy reciprocal of the Blackout of 2003 will be the purchase of billions of dollars' worth of electrical transmission hardware.

• Citigroup gets a black eye in Rusnak caper

  May 28, 2003

  JUST WHEN you thought it was safe to walk down Wall Street again without two Dobermans to repel the white-collar muggers, Allied Irish Banks brings new allegations of misdeeds against Bank of America and Citigroup.

• Bailout pays airlines for years of bad management

  September 30, 2001

  AS HE pursued his doomed merger with United Airlines earlier this year, US Airways chief executive Rakesh Gangwal said "there is no Plan B" if regulators were to block the deal.