Toledo Area Economic Plan Update

Toledo officials are working to build support for their new economic development plan. Go here to read more. The heart of the new plan is to create a new urban economic development strategy for Lucas County and the City of Toledo.

Insurance Industry Growing in China

The insurance industry is putting down roots in China. The New York-based Metropolitan Life Insurance (Metlife) announced here Thursday the establishment of a joint venture in the Chinese capital in collaboration with an airport management company. Metlife and Beijing Capital Airport Group Company (BCAC) will have half-and-half ownership of China U.S. Metlife. However, the new establishment added to the concerns of other industry players as the two showed their intention to dominate the air passenger accident insurance market. Here for more. And yes, car insurers are headed that way as well.

Kansas Bioscience Initiative

The Kansas Senate voiced approval Friday of a bill to put $500 million behind the state's fledgling bioscience industry, but the debate over stem-cell research continues.

The measure would divert the funds over the next 15 years into bioscience research and development and establish an 11-member bioscience authority to work with state universities, recruit top scholars and build facilities. Supporters say the effort would create thousands of new jobs.

But much of the cutting-edge work in bioscience involves stem-cell research, and the measure that has gained approval so far stipulates that research funded through the initiative could not include abortions or the use of cells or tissues derived from abortions.

Here for more.

MCI and Telecoms Continue to Suffer

While there has been some improvement, things are far from terrific in the telecom industry. MCI is dumping 1,000 jobs in Colorado. Closing centers elsewhere, including one in Niles, Ohio. Here to read more.

Stay tuned

Hyundai Supplier Auto Electronic America Corp. Picks Georgiana, Ala.

Yes, more Korean businesses are coming this way!

Georgiana, home to the annual Hank Williams Festival, now has another reason to celebrate: The town has landed its first Hyundai supplier.

Auto Electronic America Corp., a tier-two supplier, has chosen the town as the home of its first U.S. operation. The South Korea-based company will build, install and service carts, racks, conveyors and other equipment for Hyundai and some of its suppliers. Initially, the company will employ five to 10 and grow to about 50 employees.

Here to read more.

Global Economic Growth Forecast

A Reuters poll of bank economists shows they expect the world economy to grow 4.2 per cent this year before slowing in 2005 — but they differ on how the pace of global expansion should be calculated.

Forecasts for 2004 global growth ranged from 3.3 per cent to 4.7 per cent among the 38 economists polled between March 18 and 24. However, they were based on widely differing calculations, with some economists looking just at China and the United States and others analyzing up to 60 countries weighted by their purchasing power parity.

Here to read more.

The "Price" China is Paying for Torrid Growth

Environmental damage from China's breakneck economic growth, the spread of AIDS and growing poverty threaten the future of China's drive to better living standards, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday.

China faces daunting shortages of productive farmland and water, said the U.N. Development Program study. Untreated sewage discharge and industrial effluent have left most rivers, lakes and groundwater heavily polluted, it said.

"China is not yet on track in reversing the loss of its environmental resources," said the report, which assesses the country's ability to meet goals set by the Millennium Summit in 2000.

The report underscores tough challenges facing the country as it struggles to balance economic growth with the pressures of its rising population.

Acknowledging the human cost of dramatic growth, China's leaders say they're adjusting policies to ensure sustainable development.

Here to read more.

Build National and Global Partnerships

Regional collaboration is fine and dandy. Do it! The real partnerships your area needs to build are with your counterparts, including your counterparts in India, China, Singapore, Germany, Mexico, Japan, Seattle, Salt Lake, Phoenix, Cleveland, Little Rock, and Bowling Green, Ohio.

Why? Because we need to advance the ED system into a seamless global network that connects places eveywhere, but especially those places that share economic fortunes and losses. Please consider it...before it's too late. ED strategy is at least 5-7 years behind global business strategy and we need to catch up!

The Move to the Global Workforce

And that is exactly what is happening. That is what I told the US Dept. of Labor in a presentation this past Monday and the Governor's Ohio Workforce Policy Board two weeks earlier.

Read this summary of a recent Business Week article...

Below the boiling political rhetoric, a real threat America's workers face is the potential for U.S. wages to sink to overseas levels. Americans have become increasingly worried over the past year about the lack of job growth in an otherwise strong economy, amid fears that the "offshoring" of white-collar work is a key culprit. This has helped make jobs -- those sent overseas and those not created at home -- one of the hottest issues in the 2004 Presidential campaign.

That's why the spread of global labor competition to the top of the skill ladder could be so significant. The ability of U.S. companies to find architects, engineers, programmers, and financial analysts in places like India for a fraction of what they cost at home almost certainly will create a dampening effect, sooner or later, on the pay of the 80% of U.S. employees who until now have been unaffected by such global job competition. "White-collar offshoring will make the wage outlook worse for high-skilled Americans, no question," says Brookings Institution economist William T. Dickens.

Will somebody please tell me why I should feel good about offshoring? Here to read more.

Pennsylvania Looking for Answers to Manufacturing Slide

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said this week in a conference on manufacturing in his state that reviving the manufacturing sector is a top priority because manufacturing is the backbone of the state's economy, accounting for the largest share of economic output and producing the jobs with the best wages and benefits.

Rendell, in his opening remarks, was blunt about the condition of Pennsylvania's manufacturing sector: "Pennsylvania has a manufacturing crisis, and that is an understatement," the governor said. "For 43 consecutive months, we have lost manufacturing jobs. We've lost a total in those 43 months of 133,000 jobs." Only five states -- California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina -- have lost more manufacturing jobs than Pennsylvania over the past three years, Rendell said.

Here to read more.

China's Hunt for Big Name Companies

Beijing plans to issue a series of regulations in a bid to become home to more multinationals.

Zhang Mao, Beijing's vice-mayor, said that the municipal government has formulated a draft of the regulations and sent it to the relative departments for discussion and improvement. The policies are expected to be released very soon. An official with the city's Commerce Bureau, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the draft includes all of the preferential policies that other municipalities, cities and provinces have promised to offer translational enterprises.

"Beijing boasts unique advantages," said Zhang. "Transnational firms want to be based in an economic policy-making and supervision centre, a hub inhabited by professionals and a location boasting prosperous markets. Beijing is all of that."

Shanghai, southern China's most prosperous city and China's traditional financial centre, is pushing Beijing the hardest. It was the home to 41 multinationals' headquarters, including GE, HSBC, CitiBank, Philip, Carrefour and Kodak, by the end of July.

Experts say headquarters in Beijing are focused on the telecommunication and information industries, while manufacturing, finance and commerce groups prefer Shanghai

Here to read more.

China Growth to Slow, Says Economist

China's wildfire economic growth will taper off this year and Korea should prepare for the slowdown in its biggest export market, a visiting economist from Morgan Stanley said yesterday.

"Last year, 36 percent of your total exports growth went to China," said Stephen Roach, chief economist at the global investment bank, during a speech in Seoul.

"You must prepare for the coming slowdown in the Chinese economy."

Before coming to Korea, the Wall Street economist traveled to Beijing, where he said he confirmed that Chinese officials wanted to decelerate expansion to usher in a soft landing.

"They were worried about overheating," Roach said.

Here to read more.

Worker Shortage Down the Road

Has the jobs situation got you down? Just wait another six years. By 2010, the U.S. will have 8 million more jobs than there are workers to do them, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) forecasts. Of course, that's cold comfort to anyone who's out of work, or even to someone who's working but desperately needs a change. But it should be of some balm to older workers -- the very group that tended to get short shrift in the dot-com boom -- says business researcher Bob Morison, an executive vice-president with Concours Group, a research, education, and management-consulting firm in Kingwood, Tex.

Companies will need to do a better job of reaching out to mature workers if they want to stay competitive, Morison argues in "It's Time to Retire Retirement," a piece he co-wrote for the March issue of the Harvard Business Review. As the article's title suggests, one of the changes Morison and his colleagues foresee is that companies will have to stop nudging employees out the door when they turn 65.

Here to read more.

Economic Development in Malaysia

In the early 1970s, the peaceful padi fields of Banyan Baru in Penang were on the verge of being overtaken by a technological storm which would transform the economy of a state in decline.

Penang saw its future in technology rather than trading and agriculture, and decided to entice foreign companies to set up offshore manufacturing facilities in Malaysia’s first free industrial zone.

While most of Asia was still in the high-tech Dark Ages, Penang managed to attract landmark investments from seven then-rising IT stars—Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), National Semiconductor, Hewlett-Packard, Clarion, Litronix and Robert Bosch.

In the decades since, hundreds of IT companies including Dell, Sony, NEC, Acer, Siemens, Seagate, Agilent and Solectron have set up shop on the "Silicon Island".

Here to read more.

San Francisco Ups ED Efforts

Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled plans to capture more businesses for his city with a program that could intensify the economic rivalry between San Francisco and the East Bay. Biotech, life sciences, nanotech and "green technology" companies are at the top of the mayor's list of the type of industries he is most interested in attracting. Newsom believes San Francisco has little choice but to become more aggressive in its courting of companies, especially with its ongoing budget difficulties.

Here to read more.

Information Sector Growth

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the information supersector is expected to increase by 18.5 percent, adding 632,000 jobs by 2012. Information contains some of the fast-growing computer-related industries such as software publishers; Internet publishing and broadcasting; and Internet service providers, Web search portals, and data processing services. Employment in these industries is expected to grow by 67.9 percent, 41.1 percent, and 48.2 percent, respectively.

The information supersector also includes telecommunications, broadcasting, and newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishers. Increased demand for residential and business land-line and wireless services, cable service, high-speed Internet connections, and software will fuel job growth among these industries. How do you define this important sector.

Here to read other industry growth forecasts by BLS.

The Eternal Question Regarding Sustainable Development is...

Does being environmentally sustainable compromise or enhance corporate profit? Go here to find out how Colorado businesses are answering this question.

Bay Area Sustainable Development Efforts

The Bay Area has evolved some inovative regional strategies for sustainable economic development. Among other things, read the draft regional compact that the Bay Area Council has prepared. Here for more.

Green Design

Design is the crux of sustainable development. The concept of designing in line with Nature has been around for a very long time. Looking for some modern ideas on how to "green design?" Click here and find how what Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has to say about this subject.

Social Investing

Social investing is a close kin to economic development. Don't believe me? Take a few minutes to see what "social investing" is all about.

Here to read more.

Corporate Environmental Reports

Looking for corporate environmental reports? Look no further. Go here. You will find a very helpful searchable database that will make your hunt easier.

Using Conversation to Change the World

Paul Dolan of Fetzer Vineyards is using conversation to create sustainability inside a major corporation and across his industry.

Here to read more.