It's too soon to grade stimulus bill

July 10, 2009

President Barack Obama's stimulus bill was passed fewer than five months ago. Only a small fraction of the money has been spent, but Republicans already know it's a failure.

Recent columns

• Look out, Baltimore, health care reform is on the way

  July 8, 2009

  New York thrived during the housing-finance bubble. The health-care bubble is being very good to metro Baltimore.

• Md. lawmakers hedging bets on economy

  July 3, 2009

  Thousands of investors bailed out on Legg Mason's Bill Miller last year as funds he manages plunged much further than the stock market overall.

• PSC ignoring the law on Constellation-EDF deal

  July 1, 2009

  You don't need to be a lawyer to understand how Gov. Martin O'Malley's Public Service Commission is flouting the law. Rarely is the difference so bright between what is permitted and what is perpetrated.

• Time to lock in energy prices?

  June 25, 2009

  Matthew Simmons, Texas author and investment banker and the guy who bet oil will hit $200 a barrel next year, feels pretty good.

• Maryland politics, economy just aren't Southern anymore

  June 10, 2009

  Isn't it time Maryland seceded from the South? Should we finally ratify the coup set in motion by Abraham Lincoln, John W. Garrett and Samuel Gompers?

• Lights and tunnels, but the turnaround isn't here yet

  June 5, 2009

  Even the sourpusses and Eeyores have lightened up. New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, who was talking about a "near depression" last fall and government takeovers of major banks as recently as April, now says "there is light at the end of the tunnel."

• It's time to end the Age of the Deal

  June 3, 2009

  Donald Trump published The Art of the Deal in 1989, right before heading into bankruptcy court.

• The old GM vanishes down the road

  May 29, 2009

  They were still buying General Motors shares on Thursday, as if the company deserved its space in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. GM stock dipped 3 cents to $1.12 on Thursday after rising more than a dime earlier.

• Advice to grads: Strap yourself in for the long ride ahead

  May 27, 2009

  What advice do we give graduates for the worst economy most of us can remember? The same advice as for when times are flush.

• State income tax isn't why those millionaires are fleeing

  May 22, 2009

  The millionaires are fleeing Maryland, all right. But not because of the measly tax surcharge on income over $1 million.

• So, are you feeling any better?

  May 20, 2009

  Recessions are the economy's way of improving our well-being and making us live longer, say various news outlets.

• Low standards aren't likely to give a lift to regional fliers

  May 16, 2009

  Do commuter pilots flying from BWI to Newark or other short-hop destinations know what they're doing? Do they make more than, say, a fry cook at Fuddruckers?

• Employers bracing for hospital rate rise

  May 13, 2009

  Everybody complains about energy costs. Although gas prices have plunged from last summer's highs, energy is still one of the most visible culprits in the inflation that eats away paychecks, government budgets and corporate profits.

• GM workers wait to see if 'cold shutdown' will warm

  May 9, 2009

  On Monday their paychecks stop, and the long days at home start.

• Pharmacist 'going to stay' with Hale's 1st Mariner

  May 6, 2009

  If all First Mariner Bancorp's shareholders were as loyal as Frank Wesolowski, the company's stock would still be at $10 or $15.

• Pharmacist 'going to stay' with Hale's 1st Mariner

  May 5, 2009

  If all First Mariner Bancorp's shareholders were as loyal as Frank Wesolowski, the company's stock would still be at $10 or $15.

• Obama raises hard question of end-of-life care

  May 2, 2009

  The Medicare health program for seniors jeopardizes the country's fiscal health a lot more than the fiscal stimulus or Wall Street bailouts.

• Congressional plan won't correct credit card system's most basic problems

  April 29, 2009

  The liberal case for credit-card reform is well known: Greedy banks victimize card users with high interest rates and outrageous fees; Congress must crack down to make the system fair.

• It's 'me first' for corporate managers

  April 25, 2009

  The choice that regulators gave Bank of America chief Kenneth Lewis could not have been clearer: Harm your shareholders or lose your job. Lewis chose to keep his job.

• Good luck stopping TARP fraud

  April 22, 2009

  When economic historians look back on the great age of financial fraud, they will marvel at Enron, WorldCom, Bernard Madoff, "liar-loan" mortgages and the rest. But what might really blow their minds are the shenanigans presided over by the U.S. government in the Great Bailout of 2008-2009.

• Let's cut spending and raise taxes

  April 18, 2009

  Thoughts on taxes, tea parties and Washington's looming fiscal disaster.

• Rouse risked designs, not finances

  April 17, 2009

  James Rouse took risks with malls and marketplaces, not finances. General Growth Properties did the opposite.

• Legg a model for how to face up to mistakes

  April 15, 2009

  It's a shame the rest of American finance can't clean itself up like Legg Mason did. If Wall Street could confess to terrible losses and sweep them out the door the way the big Baltimore money manager did, we might be closer to ending the recession.

• U.S. economic crisis is far from over

  April 11, 2009

  Every horror movie comes with interludes in which the stalker appears to be dead, the demon exorcised, the vampire staked.

• Slots bid process wipes out hoped-for benefits

  February 11, 2009

  Legalizing slot machines was supposed to save Maryland horse tracks, help Maryland schools and keep the Preakness in Baltimore. That it might fail on all counts, in a kind of grotesque trifecta, is probably what everybody involved with it deserves.

• Discord perils fuel fund's goal

  January 10, 2009

  The late Victorine Q. Adams helped black politicians challenge Baltimore's white establishment in the 1950s, became the first black woman on the City Council in the 1960s and founded one of the nation's first nonprofits to help people pay energy bills in the 1970s.

• Biggest winner in Constellation deal is Buffett

  December 18, 2008

  "Warren Buffett loses out to the French" was the gist of several headlines yesterday on Electricite de France's deal to invest $4.5 billion in Constellation Energy Group.

• EDF's offer appears to have a shot

  December 10, 2008

  Electricite de France's proposal to invest $4.5 billion in Constellation Energy Group's nuclear-generation business looks like it has a shot.

• Constellation offer: pot of gold or elusive rainbow?

  December 4, 2008

  Like the Wizard of Oz, Electricite de France looked into the souls of everybody connected with Constellation Energy Group and offered to grant their greatest desires.

• Constellation brought the near-collapse on itself

  September 19, 2008

  Would Constellation Energy's near-collapse and emergency sale have been necessary if the General Assembly hadn't resisted and ultimately quashed its planned merger with Florida's FPL Group two years ago?

• Build the natural gas terminal, but not at Sparrows Point

  August 20, 2008

  Maryland undoubtedly needs more and cheaper energy, but we're not going to do just anything to get it. We won't strip state forests for fireplace fodder. We won't reverse pollution controls on cars and power plants.

• Ferris missed a chance to act

  April 11, 2008

  David A. Dadante was making questionable stock trades almost immediately after Ferris Baker Watts took him on as a client in early 2003.

• Point's future is up to Annapolis

  March 26, 2008

  The global economy has done its part: Russia's OAO Severstal has agreed to buy the Sparrows Point steel mill and invest in badly needed upgrades.

• Ground rent law violates the principles of due process, fair play

  December 13, 2006

  Because Deloris McNeil missed paying a $96-a-year ground rent bill, she lost the Fayette Street house she had bought for $44,500 and lived in for years. The tiny, delinquent bill morphed into creditor-seizure powers that trumped fair play, common sense and fundamental rights.

• However it's spun, Baltimore is losing a headquarters

  December 20, 2005

  As sales of key corporate citizens to out-of-town landlords go, the merger of Constellation Energy with FPL Group isn't that bad. So why are they trying to spin us like a dynamo in a heat wave?

• U.S. probes grant to city nonprofit

  October 2, 2005

  The U.S. Education Department's inspector general is investigating whether a senior official of the agency improperly helped the National Federation of the Blind win a key federal grant around the time she was discussing taking a job at the Baltimore-based nonprofit.

• Big rise in Md. tax revenue is partly credited to home sales

  July 31, 2005

  WHAT'S BEHIND the surprising spurt in Maryland tax collections and what Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. calculates is a billion-dollar budget surplus?

• Reform goes back to start on nonprofit boondoggle

  July 20, 2005

  FAITHFUL READERS know about a $2 billion federal boondoggle called the Javits-Wagner- O'Day program, which pays peanuts to disabled people working on no-bid government contracts, enriches nonprofit executives and operates with little oversight or control.

• A warning to charitable donors and a case for tougher disclosure laws on nonprofits

  June 19, 2005

  RIIIING. IT'S the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon, calling across that state. They want money "to help the blind of the area," according to a fund-raising script from 2003.

• Nonprofits seem in no big hurry to fix their problems

  March 2, 2005

  The nonprofit-industrial complex knows it has a problem.

• Chimes, other charities are object of badly needed reform

  December 5, 2004

  FEDERAL authorities have launched a tax probe of Baltimore-based Chimes Inc. and have proposed sweeping governance standards, including executive salary limits, for Chimes and other nonprofit groups that get $2 billion annually from taxpayers to employ the disabled.

• The lights start to flash at end of the blackout

  August 20, 2003

  IN ECONOMICS there's a heads for every tails, a pull for every push, and the happy reciprocal of the Blackout of 2003 will be the purchase of billions of dollars' worth of electrical transmission hardware.

• Citigroup gets a black eye in Rusnak caper

  May 28, 2003

  JUST WHEN you thought it was safe to walk down Wall Street again without two Dobermans to repel the white-collar muggers, Allied Irish Banks brings new allegations of misdeeds against Bank of America and Citigroup.

• Bailout pays airlines for years of bad management

  September 30, 2001

  AS HE pursued his doomed merger with United Airlines earlier this year, US Airways chief executive Rakesh Gangwal said "there is no Plan B" if regulators were to block the deal.