We can all be excused for feeling déjà vu — 2021 does feel a little like 2009, the last time a new administration came into the White House with the votes to move legislation through both the House and Senate. Both years represent periods of economic uncertainty, and a national health crisis, although the coronavirus pandemic is much more serious than the swine flu turned out to be. [Continue]
The arrival of COVID-19 brought with it not only a public health crisis, but an economic crisis. The virus has altered the way we work, shop and interact with friends and family. As a result, economic activity slowed and the outlook dimmed. Businesses, expecting sharp declines in profitability, increased their credit usage, and consumers reduced their spending and increased their savings. [Continue]
Pandemic, civil riots, contentious (and contested) elections — and this wasn’t a dystopian movie script. This describes the year 2020. And because of this, the phrase “Hindsight is 2020” has been permanently removed from usage by many people; we don’t want to see this with clarity again. [Continue]
Nobody knows when the pandemic is going to clear up. Some are saying there will be a vaccine soon; others are saying we will be dealing with masks, social distancing, quarantines and travel bans for years. I have decided to stop waiting for things to get better; it’s time to make the most of the present, regardless of the conditions we can’t control. [Continue]
There are about 4,700 banks in America. Only 21 are Black-owned and they have less than $5 billion in assets. The total amount of assets in U.S. commercial banks is $20 trillion. So if you think about structural racism and access to capital — and 70 percent of African American communities don’t even have a branch bank of any type in those communities — we said, “Why don’t we think about how to address it?” [Continue]
Nationally, it’s widely reported that there are 45 million students who owe approximately $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. In Wisconsin, we have more than $24 billion in outstanding student loan debt, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Making matters worse is the fact that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority reports 53 percent of Wisconsinites live paycheck-to-paycheck each month. [Continue]
A white paper on the challenges facing commercial real estate published this spring by McKinsey & Company argues that the imperative to physically distance from our workplace colleagues due to the coronavirus has changed the demand for many types of space, creating an “unprecedented crisis for the real estate industry.” [Continue]
Cities and counties now budget for huge payouts to cover police misconduct. If you don’t think police brutality affects you, your time has come. [Continue]
There is a “hunkering down” mentality among managers in this environment. That’s understandable. Almost no organization can realistically plan for record earnings this year. But let’s not close our minds to the possibility of opportunity. Despite a lack of precedent and a lack of information, you will need to make important decisions in the coming months to navigate this environment. [Continue]
With consumer spending amounting to 70 percent of domestic economic activity, lagging confidence ripples to negative effect. Perhaps this explains why, on March 26, as millions filed for unemployment, and as a handful of Senators debated how much relief jobless Americans needed (or deserved), Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell did the unexpected. He went mainstream. [Continue]