The Best Places in America to Starve

Michael Bowler | RSS | Tue, May 12 2009 | 2 Comments

On the boot heels of a Lucrative Investing article about the top 25 areas in America to succeed in business, an article must supplement that and provide the best places in America to go broke due to the high cost of living and failing economy. There are a few things that this writer finds rather symbolic, ironic even, about these locations, some due to the locations involved in the previous article, which you will see if you read both articles, and some are from personal connections.

One thing that the intuitive reader will notice is that in the previous article, a lot of suburbs and rural areas were credited as the best places to prosper. In this article, conversely, major cities are picked on. That is primarily caused by a more demanding economy, with most of these cities totaling well over one million residents.

Thanks to real estate prices that are ‘through the roof’, pun intended, high costs of living, and the highest unemployment rates in the nation next to Detroit, Los Angeles tops our list. Despite being home to the President of the United States, with high real estate prices, high cost of living that is barely under LA and New York City, and almost 10% unemployment, Chicago comes in second. Miami comes in third, despite having three of its close suburbs on the positive list from yesterday’s article.

Residents of The Big Apple have to try to curb the high costs of living, exorbinant living expenses, as even rent in many Manhattan condos can draw blood, only with a median income of $69,500. That may seem reasonable, but remember, so many television personalities live in New York City, like all sorts of nationally syndicated newscasters and the Olsen twins. Naturally, that brings the salary for “normal” people much lower. Coupled with an 8.8% unemployment rate, that brings frenzy to the streets of New York, and puts them at number four. Providence, Rhode Island is fifh on the list, primarily due to the fact that business activity is scarce. Few businesses are quick to branch out into Rhode Island, few universities there come out with top workforce prospects, and venture business capital cannot be easily obtained. Median salary is around 56,000. That obviously means many people are under 30,000 a year, with which it is hard to provide for a family.

The most ironic thing about this list is the fact that some larger cities that are on this list, namely Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, have suburbs that made it near the top of the list on yesterday’s article about productive areas. The suburbs are thriving, but as soon as you hit the city limits, you theoretically hit poverty central. Unfortunately, this is the pattern of a large recession. These cities will bounce back like they always do. When the economy bounces back, it will bounce back as quickly as it declined, and these cities will thrive once again.

Full list (ties are designated with matching numbers):

19. Boston, Massachusetts

19. Warren, Michigan

18. San Francisco, California

17. Jacksonville, Florida

16. St. Louis, Missouri

15. Orlando, Florida

13. Memphis, Tennessee

13. Tampa, Florida

12. Portland, Oregon

11. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

10. San Diego, California

9. Newark, New Jersey

8. Cleveland, Ohio

7. Long Island, New York

6. Riverside, California

5. Providence, Rhode Island

4. New York, New York

3. Miami, Florida

2. Chicago, Illinois

1. Los Angeles, California

Related posts:
Top 4 best cities in America to find work
For less than $200,000 you can buy a business in Memphis

Tags: failing, locations, new york

When will the bailout actually help the economy?

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Sat, Dec 13 2008 | 0 Comments

Banks are still failing, investors are losing thousands (if not more), families are still losing their homes. So how was the bailout supposed to help?

We, as United States taxpayers, have funded companies with $700 billion. It is OUR loan to THEM. However, the economy is still sub-par and there are no investments that we can put our money in for safety with the guarantee of even a tiny profit.

Short run T-bills have 0% interest rate. From what I’ve learned in my managerial finance class, when the T-bills is at 0% that means the risk free rate of interest on an investment is 0% and anything above that (such as on a corporate bond) included a default and market risk premium. (To me) that means any coupon rate on a bond (corporate, municipal, etc) is all risk…

The point I’m trying to make is that the bailout was supposed to help the economy…so when will that happen. There are thousands, if not millions, who are losing their retirement funds in the market. When will they be bailed out?

Related posts:
The Fed may lose its ability to bailout huge companies
What will the credit card companies do?

Tags: retirement funds, UNITE, investor

Citigroup becomes a large contributor of unemployment

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Nov 17 2008 | 0 Comments

Citigroup announced today that it will cut around 53,000 employees. It is attempting to reduce its budget by almost 20% in 2009.

Citigroup has already announced it was cutting 22,000 jobs; that announcement was made in October.

All of this news comes after Citi has gone around buying up, and attempting to buy up, failing banks.

Related posts:
Citigroup: Sell Palm, RIM and buy Motorola
Unemployment rate increases to 10.2%

Tags: job, budget, citigroup