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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nnillionaire who wrote (82477)	4/12/2010 4:30:03 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 224705

Where was the Dow when Obama took office? 7949 - Nice Gain.

To: nnillionaire who wrote (82477)	4/12/2010 4:31:55 PM
From: lorne	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224705

Wonder if these are democrat controled cities? Ten U.S. Cities In Free Fall Francesca Levy, 04.09.10 forbes.com Economic indicators in these metros have gone from bad to worse, with no sign of recovery. List: Ten U.S. Cities In Free Fall Miami boasts a popular South Beach club scene, Art Deco Architecture, and perhaps the best Cuban food in the country. But residents don't have much else to celebrate. More than three years after the economy started its downward slide, the Miami metro area, like a handful of Sun Belt cities, still hasn't begun to recover. Median home prices in Miami have fallen 38% since its market peaked in the second quarter of 2007; the city's 11% unemployment rate is above the national average and has grown more than most of the 40 cities we surveyed. Cities in the "Sand States" of Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada, where overbuilding was rampant, are also in trouble, claiming nine of the top 10 spots in our list of cities in free fall. In Las Vegas, Riverside, Calif., and Phoenix, median home prices have fallen 50%, 44% and 37% from their respective peaks. Jobs are vanishing. Though country-wide, employers added 162,00 jobs last month, Riverside gained 13% fewer jobs in February 2010 (the latest numbers available by metro) than it did the same month three years earlier. Tampa, Fla., saw a 10% drop, and Los Angeles added 9% fewer jobs over the same time period. These cities are also slow to absorb their glut of unsold foreclosed homes, keeping recovery at bay. "These were highly speculative housing markets," says Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a Manhattan-based real estate appraisal firm. "In the markets that have unloaded a lot of foreclosed housing stock there's still a lot more coming." Behind the Numbers To find the country’s cities in free fall, we rated its 40 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) on six metrics. We ranked each MSA on the percent its median home price has fallen since its individual peak, using data provided by Local Market Monitor, a housing market data tracker. To get an estimate for the number of new homes being built, we used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which tracks how many building permits are issued. Roughly 98% of these permits become new home starts. We looked at the percent change in new building permits between February 2007 and February 2010. We also wanted to know how many people were moving in and out of these metros, since a growing population buoys a local economy. We used the Census Bureau's most recent population estimates to rank each metro on its net population change between July 2006 and July 2009. To judge each city's productivity we also ranked each metro on its per capita gross domestic product in 2008, the most recent year available, using data from Moody's ( MCO - news - people ) Economy.com. Finally, we ranked the metros on the percent change in unemployment between January 2007 and January 2010 and the number of jobs they added between February 2007 and February 2010, with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We averaged these rankings to arrive at a final score.