Free Republic

The housing and renting market continues to teeter on the brink, and the newest incoming data doesn't offer up any clear signs of stabilization. In fact, new data continues to suggest the opposite: that volatility in housing could only be beginning...and that we're going to have plenty of fodder on deflation, which we have talked about frequently, invoking the effects of a "reverse bullwhip" on the economy. A new report from Apartments.com examining multifamily rent growth trends for July 2022 shows that the Sunbelt markets are set up for what is being called a "a significant collapse of demand" heading...

As Democrats try to win control of the White House and the Senate in 2020, they face a geographical puzzle — the path to the presidency may conflict with the one to a Senate majority. Democrats’ best shot at the White House is to win back their old turf — the Rust Belt states heavy with working-class white voters who have become increasingly difficult to hold in the party’s tent. But the path to winning the Senate travels through what many believe is the Democrats’ territory of the future. College-educated suburbanites, young people and minorities make up the winning coalition...

When the unemployment rate rose in most states last month, it underscored the extent to which the deep recession, the anemic recovery and the lingering crisis of joblessness are beginning to reshape the nation’s economic map. ... Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.

Southern States Poach Businesses Amid Downturn By ANSLEY HAMAN When NCR Corp. started looking late last summer to move from its hometown of Dayton, Ohio, economic development agencies in the South pulled out all the stops in a bid to lure the 125-year-old company best known as a cash-register manufacturer. Georgia quickly offered more than $100 million in tax and training incentives. State officials connected NCR with six Georgia research universities willing to license new technologies and train workers. View Full Image Bloomberg News NCR and other companies are moving operations to the South. A Volkswagen plant is seen under...

Arizona, Florida, and Nevada have run through the riches of their boom and are starting to look more like cash-strapped New York. If states were airlines, New York and California would be Delta and United. Even when competently managed, they must shoulder the institutional inheritance of decades of other people’s decisions, good and bad. They must bear the heavy cost of legions of retired government workers. And they carry billions of dollars of debt that backs expensive, complex infrastructure. Over the last few decades, when New Yorkers and Californians tired of paying high taxes to fund big government, they tended...

Latin America: You'd think Mexico's election was lost by a leftist instead of won by a free marketer. But Felipe Calderon's victory reflects growing confidence in free trade in overlooked flyover states. Not that the media have noticed. Virtually all of them covered the election from Mexico City expecting a leftist victory, so it's little surprise that they ignore the winner and focus now on soap opera and sour grapes rallies led by Calderon's opponent, Mexico City-based Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. During the campaign, U.S. media gushed over Lopez Obrador as the "Mestizo Bill Clinton." Now he's preparing to become...

here is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is "natalism."All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating...