The South Will Rise Again, Pardon Me Pandit, Red Box Killed the Video Store

The South Will Rise AgainThe trickle of migration from the North to the South continues. I well expect Ohio as well as PA, IN, MI, WI, MN, and IL to lose population once the census is tallied. Steel, cars, finance, and raw materials had made the Midwest the belt buckle of industrial production in the United States. Take Northeast Ohio at the beginning of the 20th Century. Rockefeller's Standard Oil was head quartered in Cleveland, the tire industry was founded in Akron, and Ford Motor used production sources throughout Ohio. Secondary manufacturing and industrial applications grew as well. For instance Sherwin-Williams Paint, Glidden, and even companies like Eaton, TRW, and Timken rose to stand alone...or what we thought were stand alone businesses. Today, Ohio's credit rating was lowered by Moody's. It is not the end of the world, but it is a shot across the bow that Ohio must transition and transition quickly. Sweet Home Alabama

At the end of the Civil War, a popular phrase among Southerners was "The South will Rise Again." After Sherman's March from Atlanta much of that non-sensical talk was beaten out of the South. However, with the advent of electricity... closed shop states... and the Civil Rights movement, it appears as thought the South could rise again... and with the economic rise... there will be a political rise as well. Not the same type of rise the Confederates has hoped for, but a rise that will eventually lead to increased power in Washington D.C..

However, I am reminded of a fellow colleague who taught in the South for a number of years. She described her situation as terrible inside the public school systems... many of which still lack critical funding and cultural idiosyncrasies that would leave many of us scratching our heads. In the school where she taught in Central Florida, there were 13 different languages spoken in her high school alone. She literally kissed the ground of Ohio the day she moved back... and that is the truth.

Pardon Me Pandit
Here are a list of comments made by Citi's CEO. Candid...yes... honest...maybe.... Revealing... definitely.

1. “There is a clear trade-off between saving more and stimulating the economy in the short term to achieve stability."

2. “We too were very credit-dependent and relied too greatly on non-core, or wholesale funding sources, including securitization and other aspects of the shadow banking system and we suffered from imbalances in the economy.”

3. “We have too much leverage as consumers and as a financial system.”

4. “It is not hard to envision a significant gap in the availability of credit.”

5. "There is a clear linkage between credit creation and [gross domestic product] growth. Again, the implication is lower growth."

Red Box Killed the Video Store
Again, I walked into Video Update and received a pitch from the dopes behind the counter. This time it was a membership to their video club that would allow me to watch a certain number of videos a month...with no late charges. Without the pre-paid membership it would cost me $5.74 to rent a video for three days. If I wanted to be a good husband a give my wife a selection and pick two choices, we'd be talking $10.00.... heck we might as well see the movie at a theater. I placed the videos down at Video Update, and walked up to the Red Box and selected two videos for $2.14. The end of video stores is at hand.