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GETTING STARTED: TIME TO START FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING IS NOW
(Tribune Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune, 8/6/07)

"In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do
is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do
is nothing."      - THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The time for debate about whether climate change is happening and whether we humans are largely to blame has passed. It's time to start doing something about it.

That seems to be the message in a report from eight Utah scientists for use by Gov. Jon Huntsman's Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Change. The report doesn't recommend any particular steps to reduce carbon emissions, but the implications of doing nothing come through loud and clear:

If the United States does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas, Utah's average annual temperature will rise about 8 degrees over this century. Such dramatic warming would drastically and negatively alter our economy, lifestyle, health and environment.

Climate scientists from the University of Utah, Brigham Young University and and U.S. Department of Agriculture were joined in writing the report by the state climatologist, based at Utah State University. They reviewed and analyzed scientific research on climate change to determine how global warming is likely to affect Utah.

The conclusions they reported to the governor's panel were unanimous. The findings reflect what international groups of scientists, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, have already reported.

Overwhelming evidence points to human-produced carbon emissions as the main culprit in the unprecedented warming trend of the past half-century. The Utah scientists say we can expect to warm even faster than most of the rest of the world and that warming will cause more drought and less snowpack. That means less water for farms and homes, since Utahns take their drinking and irrigation water largely from reservoirs fed by snowmelt.

The predictions are dire, but we're not necessarily locked into this bleak scenario. We can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but we have to act soon to replace fossil fuels with clean-burning power sources. Since carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for nearly 100 years, it will be decades before cutting emissions impacts the pace of global warming.

Failure to act now means that the Utah of today will not be the one we bequeath future generations.

 

THOMAS: LOGIC OF GLOBAL WARMING JIHADISTS: SO MUCH HOT AIR
(Source: Cal Thomas, Salt Lake Tribune, 8/15/07)

In every child's life there comes a time when childhood fantasies are shattered and he or she is forced to accept reality - there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy; parents don't always mean it when they promise to stay married until parted by death.

Grown-up scientists, theologians, historians, archaeologists and others who pursue facts and objective truths are rooted in reality and constantly adjusting their conclusions, theories and hypotheses when new information comes to light. Those who ignore facts and cling to outdated information, or outright falsehoods, can quickly embrace fanaticism.

So it is with ''global warming,'' the secular religion of our day that even has a good number of adherents among people of faith. Having decided to focus less on the eternal and whether anyone dwells there, global warming fundamentalists are pushing planet worship on us in a manner that would make a jihadist proud.

There are at least two characteristics all fundamentalists share. One is the exclusion and sometimes suppression of any and all information that challenges or contradicts the belief one wishes to impose on all. The other is the use of the state in pursuit of their objectives, overriding the majority's will.

With global warming, some members of the scientific community - not all of whom are climatologists, who disagree among themselves - have circled the wagons, denying access and labeling illegitimate any scientist who disagrees with the ''doctrines'' of a recently warming planet. The big media have been complicit in this censorship or ridicule of alternative views, mostly refusing to interview anyone who does not push the global warming faith.

CBS News this week broadcast a four-part series on ''climate change.'' Newsweek magazine recently slammed global warming ''deniers.'' That brought a counterattack in the Aug. 20 issue from Newsweek contributor Robert Samuelson, who termed the article ''highly contrived'' and ''fundamentally misleading.'' In 1975, Newsweek was just as convinced - using ''scientific evidence'' - that a new ice age was upon us.

Many global warming fanatics have pointed to NASA as proof that their concerns about a warming planet are justified. They have repeatedly cited the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), whose director, James Hansen, has asserted that nine of the 10 warmest years in history have occurred since 1995, with 1998 the warmest. When NASA was confronted with evidence provided by Climate Audit, a blog run by Stephen McIntyre devoted to auditing the statistical methods and data used in historical reconstructions of past climate data, it reversed itself. Without the fanfare used to hype the global warming fanaticism it had earlier supported, NASA now says four of the top 10 years of high temperatures are from the 1930s. Several previously selected ''warm'' years - 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 - fell behind 1900.

GISS now says its previous claim that 1998 was the warmest year in American history is no longer valid. The warmest year was 1934.

Has any of this new information changed the minds of the global warming fundamentalists? Nope. Neither has much of it seen the light of day in the mainstream media, which continue to carry stories where seldom is heard an alternative word and the skies are polluted all day.

The New York Times ran a story in its Sunday Business section last week that said it would cost a lot of money to fight global warming. The implication being that this money should come from government (and taxpayers), along with more government regulations and control over our lives by the very people who seem to have difficulty winning wars and controlling spending.

The Earth has warmed and cooled over many centuries. One can get a sense of who is telling the truth about global warming by the company the concept keeps. Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives. That ought to be enough to give everyone pause, along with emerging evidence that the global warming jihadists may be more full of hot air than the climate they claim is about to burn us up.

SCIENTESE, TRANSLATED: GLOBE IS WARMING FASTER THAN THOUGHT
(Source: Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 8/16/07)

If we learned that al-Qaida was secretly developing a new terrorist technique that could disrupt water supplies around the globe, force tens of millions from their homes and potentially endanger our entire planet, we would be aroused into a frenzy and deploy every possible asset to neutralize the threat.

Yet that is precisely the threat we're creating ourselves with our greenhouse gases. While there is still much uncertainty about the severity of the consequences, a series of new studies indicate that we're cooking our favorite planet more quickly than experts had expected.

The newly published studies haven't received much attention, because they're not in English but in Scientese and hence drier than the Sahara Desert. But they suggest that ice is melting and our seas are rising more quickly than most experts had anticipated. (i.e. The latest source of alarm is the news, as reported by my New York Times colleague Andrew Revkin, that sea ice in the northern polar region just set a new low .— and it still has another month of melting ahead of it. At this rate, the "permanent" north polar ice cap may disappear entirely in our lifetimes.

In case you missed the May edition of Geophysical Research Letters, an article by five scientists has the backdrop. They analyze the extent of Arctic sea ice each summer since 1953. The computer models anticipated a loss of ice of 2.5 percent per decade, but the actual loss was 7.8 percent per decade — three times greater.

The article notes that the extent of summer ice melting is 30 years ahead of where the models predict.

Three other recent reports underscore that climate change seems to be occurring more quickly than computer models had anticipated:

- Science magazine reported in March that Antarctica and Greenland are both losing ice overall, about 125 billion metric tons a year between the two of them — and the amount has accelerated over the last decade. To put that in context, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (the most unstable part of the frosty cloak over the southernmost continent) and Greenland together hold enough ice to raise global sea levels by 40 feet or so, although they would take hundreds of years to melt. We hope.

- In January, Science reported that actual rises in sea level in recent years followed the uppermost limit of the range predicted by computer models of climate change — meaning that past studies had understated the rise. As a result, the study found that the sea is likely to rise higher than most previous forecasts — to between 50 centimeters and 1.4 meters by the year 2100 (and then continuing from there).

- Science Express, the on-line edition of Science, reported last month that the world's several hundred thousand glaciers and small ice caps are thinning more quickly than people realized. "At the very least, our projections indicate that future sea-level rise may be larger than anticipated," the article declared.

What does all this mean?

"Over and over again, we're finding that models correctly predict the patterns of change but understate their magnitude," notes Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

This may all sound abstract, but climate change apparently is already causing crop failures in Africa. In countries like Burundi, you can hold children who are starving and dying because of weather changes that many experts believe are driven by our carbon emissions.

There are practical steps we can take to curb carbon emissions, and I'll talk about them in a forthcoming column. But the tragedy is that the United States has become a big part of the problem.

"Not only is the U.S. not leading on climate change, we're holding others back," said Jessica Bailey, who works on climate issues for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. "We're inhibiting progress on climate change globally."

I ran into Al Gore at a climate and energy conference this month, and he vibrates with passion about this issue – recognizing that we should confront mortal threats even when they don't emanate from al-Qaida.

"We are, now treating the Earth's atmosphere as an open sewer," he said, and (perhaps -because my teenage son was beside me) he encouraged young people to engage in peaceful protests to block major new carbon sources.

"I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers," Gore said, "and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

Critics scoff that the scientific debate is continuing, that the consequences are uncertain and they're right. There is natural variability and lots of uncertainty, especially about the magnitude and timing of climate change.

In the same way, terror experts aren't sure about the magnitude and timing of al-Qaida's, next strike. But it would be myopic to shrug that off because there's uncertainty about the risks, we shouldn't act vigorously to confront them — yet that's our national policy toward climate change, and it's a disgrace.

GLOBAL WARMING: UTAH VOWS TO
CUT POLLUTION 15%
(Source: Judy Fahys, Salt Lake Tribune, 8/23/07)

Utah and other Western states pledged Wednesday to slash the pollution blamed for global warming.

The Western Climate Initiative, a group of six states and two Canadian provinces that have joined forces to tackle global warming, announced member states will cut greenhouse gases in the region at least 15 percent by 2020. If the group is successful, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be close to 1990 levels, the states said.

Utah will not have its plan done for tackling those reductions until spring. An as-yet-to-be-created committee is expected to devise the plan.

Meanwhile other partner states, which started the regional partnership a few months before Utah joined, already have greenhouse-gas reduction goals and are deciding on specific steps to reach them.

Only last week did Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on climate change offer its priority list for addressing global warming. Plans include steps that can be taken by individuals, such as better energy efficiency in homes by swapping incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent lighting.

Steps would also require big-picture changes involving government, business and the public.

These might include such things as the development of carbon-capture technology and the addition of nuclear power to Utah's energy portfolio.

At the same time, Utah's Republican governor insisted that Utah coal will continue to be part of "our energy mix."

"Utah's goal will encourage economic development through new and innovative technologies while improving energy security, broadening and enhancing our renewable energy sector of our economy and improving the air quality in our state," he said.

Dianne Nielson, Huntsman's energy adviser, said state government continues to look at tackling global warming as an opportunity to improve the state's economy and quality of life.

She also insisted that it is not a politically polarizing issue in Utah, which is the only Republican-dominated state participating in the Western climate group. "This really isn't a partisan issue," she said. "It's an issue we all need to be addressing."

Sarah Wright, executive director of Utah Clean Energy and a member of the global warming task force, applauded the goal announced. "This is an excellent start," she said.

Once people see the value of improving energy technology and efficiency, they may be in a position to push for even more reductions, she added.

State Sen. Mike Dmitrich, D-Price, who represents Utah's coal country, predicted that the goals will be attainable in 13 years. "Technology will step up," he said.

Utah's Greenhouse Gas Facts

According to the report the Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on global warming approved last week:

* Utahns generated about 69 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2005.
* Each resident of the state that year was responsible for an average of 27 metric tons of greenhouse gases.
* The average American generates about 25 metric tons per year.
* Greenhouse gas emissions rose faster per person in Utah than elsewhere nationally, with a 40 percent increase among Utahns between 1990 and 2005, compared with a 16 percent gain nationally during the same period.
* Electric use accounts for about 37 percent of the state's greenhouse gases, while transportation contributes about 25 percent and fossil-fuel combustion generates 18 percent.

DEALING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE
MUST BECOME NATIONAL AGENDA
(Source: Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 8/21/07)

Saving energy doesn't have to mean shivering in the dark.

Dick Cheney once scoffed that energy conservation can be a, "personal virtue" but is no basis for an energy policy.

Growing evidence suggests he had it exactly wrong. Concern about greenhouse gases and reliance on imported oil usually leads to a focus on the supply side of the energy equation, particularly-exotic sources such as wind, solar, waves and hydrogen. 'The coolest car, in history is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle I once drove on a GM test track: It could go 100 miles per hour and nothing came out the exhaust but water vapor.
The catch: It cost $5 million to make.

So we need to push ahead with hydrogen and renewables, but the low-hanging fruit on the energy front is curbing demand – meaning more energy conservation. And its appalling that our government isn't leading us on that.

"The best source of new energy is efficiency and conservation," notes Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron. "The best source. is not to use as much."

Cheney's image seems to be of a dour stoic shivering in a cardigan in a frigid home, squinting under a dim light bulb, showering under a tiny trickle of (barely) solar-heated water, and then bicycling to work in the rain. If that's the alternative, then many of us might be willing to see the oceans rise, whatever happens to Florida.

But new research has shown that improvements in energy efficiency often pay for themselves, actually leaving us better off.

"This is not a sacrifice deal," Daniel Yergin, head of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, says of conservation. "This is a technology deal. After all, we're twice as energy efficient now as we were in the 1970s, and at the same time our economy has more than doubled"

James Woolsey, an energy expert and former director of the CIA, puts it this way: "People have radically overestimated the sacrifice and dramatically underestimated the opportunity."

McKinsey & Co., the business consulting company, suggests embracing energy-saving measures that pay for themselves with at least a 10 percent rate of return, McKinsey says that if this approach — at no cost to economic growth — were put into effect worldwide by 2020 the annual savings would be 1.5 times the current U.S. annual energy consumption.

McKinsey Global Institute put out a 290-page book in May detailing the steps necessary.
These include better insulation and high-efficiency heating in new homes; low-energy light, bulbs; high-efficiency appliances; and higher fuel economy standards for vehicles. To drive a mile in the U.S. typically takes 37 percent more gas than in Europe.

"The sheer waste of it all, when other countries have shown another path, is incredible," notes Diana Farrell of McKinsey Global Institute. "The opportunities here are tremendous."

The best way to encourage such steps would be to impose a carbon tax, although a cap-and- trade system is a reasonable back-up. But we also need mandates. An air-conditioner that is 35 percent more energy efficient than the present standard costs 260 percent more -- so few people buy it. But mandate that standard, and economies of scale immediately send the price plummeting.

The government also should encourage commercialization of plug-in hybrid vehicles, which could be plugged into a power outlet to charge the battery such vehicles don't use any gas on short trips and might average 100 miles per gallon.

I can't help feeling that we in the news media are part of the reason that steps to battle climate change aren't on top of the national agenda. we're good at covering things that happen on any one day -- like a tornado or hurricane -- but weak at covering complex trends. like climate change. And we tend to cover disputes by having a dutiful quote from each side, without always explaining where the scientific consensus lies.

Climate skeptics say that we don't know how serious climate change will be, and they're right. But isn't it prudent to address threats even when we're unsure of them? We don't expect to be caught in a fire, but we still believe in fire escapes and fire departments.

Suppose we had political leaders who snorted that fires are nothing new, that the science of firefighting is unclear, and that we can't impose a burden on business by establishing fire departments — while brightly adding that citizens can extinguish fires on their own out of "personal virtue."

Why, we would think those leaders were nuts.

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UTAH '07 GROWTH IS TRIPLE
THAT OF REST OF THE NATION
(Source: Angie Welling, Deseret Morning News and Ellen Simon, Associated Press)

Utah continues to lead the nation in business growth, particularly in manufacturing, which expanded nationwide for the sixth consecutive month in July.

Utah's growth in 2007 has been more than triple that of the rest of the United States, according to the Utah Business Conditions Index, a survey of supply managers and business leaders conducted monthly by Creighton University's Economic Forecasting Group.

"I expect this growth to continue well into 2007 with (the) unemployment rate dipping another 0.3 percent to 2.3 percent by October," economics professor and group director Ernie Goss said in a prepared statement Wednesday. "Manufacturing, both durable and nondurable, will lead this growth."

The state's business conditions index rose to 73.6, up from 68.2 in June and 65.4 in May. The index ranges from zero to 100, with a figure over 50 indicating an expansionary economy over the next three to six months.

New hiring was a factor in July, with Utah accounting for 33 percent of regional employment, the Creighton study states. The state is expected to experience 63 percent of regional job growth in the third quarter, compared to 31 percent in Colorado and just 6 percent in Wyoming.

Nationwide, expansion in the U.S. manufacturing sector continued for the sixth consecutive month, although at its slowest pace since March, the Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday. The Creighton group's survey uses the same methodology as the ISM.

The ISM's manufacturing index, which reflects the opinions of purchasing managers at factories, plants and utilities, registered 53.8 in July, down from 56.0 in June.
Wall Street expected the manufacturing index to remain unchanged from June, according to the consensus estimate of Wall Street economists polled by Thomson/IFR.

Still, stocks shot higher in a last-minute advance Wednesday after zigzagging for much of the day. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 150.38, or 1.14 percent, to 13,362.37. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 10.54, or 0.72 percent, to 1,465.81, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 7.60, or 0.30 percent, to 2,553.87.

According to the ISM report, new orders and production led growth, while inventories continued to contract, as they have for the past year.

Still, both new orders and production were slightly weaker in July than in June. The index for new orders registered 57.5 in July, down from 60.3 the month before, while the reading for production was 55.6 in July, down from 62.9 in June.

The top performing industries, in order, were wood products; furniture and related products; food, beverage and tobacco products; miscellaneous manufacturing; paper products; textile mills; chemical products; computer and electronic products; nonmetallic mineral products, and primary metals.

"Taken with some of the other indicators we saw today, the overall impression is the economy is continuing to muddle along," said Douglas Porter, senior economist at Nesbitt Burns Securities of Chicago.

In other economic news, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that pending sales of existing homes rose 5 percent in June from a month earlier, marking the largest monthly gain in more than three years. But the Mortgage Bankers Association said that its index of home loan applications slipped last week for the second straight week.

The Creighton report showed that the business conditions index for the entire three-state Mountain region climbed to 71.4 for July from 65.3 in June. The reading for Colorado rose to 70.7 from June's 56.6, and Wyoming's reading fell to 66.8 from June's 68.6.

 

FED GIVES NO RATE RELIEF TO BORROWERS
(Source: The Associated Press, 8/7/07)

WASHINGTON - Borrowers looking for some interest-rate relief will have to keep on waiting.

Although Federal Reserve policymakers held interest rates steady Tuesday, they gave themselves some wiggle room for a cut down the road should economic conditions take a turn for the worse.

''Financial markets have been volatile in recent weeks, credit conditions have become tighter for some households and businesses and the housing correction is ongoing,'' said the Fed, its first acknowledgment of the recent conditions that have shaken Wall Street and Main Street. ''Downside risks to growth have increased somewhat.''

The Fed did throw ''investors a bone,'' one analyst said, even though it stopped well short of saying a rate cut was imminent.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his central bank colleagues expressed hope that the economy will safely make its way. The policymakers also clung to their belief that the biggest potential danger to the economy is that inflation won't recede as they anticipate.

Against these economic crosscurrents, the Fed left an important interest rate at 5.25 percent on Tuesday. In turn, commercial banks' prime interest rate for certain credit cards, home equity lines of credit and other loans - would stay at 8.25 percent.

The central bank's key rate hasn't budged for more than a year. Before that, the Fed had raised rates for two years to fend off inflation.

On Wall Street, investors bid stocks higher, and analysts believe the Fed probably will leave rates alone at its next meeting on Sept. 18. However, economists and investors now think the odds are growing that the Fed might lower rates by the end of this year - if the economy shows signs of faltering and if inflation isn't worrisome.

For now, the Fed stuck to a forecast that the economy is likely to expand at a moderate pace in coming quarters. It also said it expected ''solid growth in employment and incomes'' - vital ingredients to the country's economic health.

The Fed was faced with a delicate dance, analysts said. To maintain credibility, it needed to acknowledge recent market gyrations, fears about a worsening housing slump and worries about a spreading and painful credit crunch. At the same time, it needed to send a comforting message but not be viewed as overly optimistic or pessimistic.

''They acknowledged, and rightly so, the elephant in the room - problems in the credit market. But they didn't feed it any peanuts by cutting rates,'' said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group.

The meltdown in the housing and mortgage markets has caused home foreclosures to climb to record highs and has forced some lenders out of business. Fears that credit problems will infect the broader financial system and the economy have fed market turbulence over recent weeks.

The free flow of credit is important to the smooth functioning of the national economy.
Increasingly restrictive lending conditions can put a damper on people's ability to buy big-ticket
items such as homes. And it can crimp businesses' capital investment and hiring. That reduced appetite by businesses and consumers would slow overall economic activity.

On inflation, the Fed policymakers again noted improvements. But they indicated they would need to see a steady string of better readings before they would downgrade their inflation risk.

MARKETING WESTERN BEAUTY
(Source: Patty Henetz, Salt Lake Tribune, 8/8/07)

Western counties that rely on timber, coal mining and oil and gas drilling at the expense of natural beauty are trading short-term gain for an economy that could rely on hunting, fishing, tourism and attracting affluent residents from other parts of the country.

That's according to a report, "The New Economy of the West: From Clearcutting to Camping," from the Sierra Club. Using federal and state data gathered over the past three decades, the report concludes that outdoor recreation is key to the vitality of Western communities, rather than extractive industries that have supported the region in the past.

But the idea that mining and drilling ever was the heart of the Western economy appears to be a bit of a myth. "In the past, [extracting] natural resources probably wasn't as big as we thought it was," said Mark Knold, senior economist for the Utah Department of Workforce Services. "It was only about 8 percent of our economy in 1960."

In rural Utah, however, mining was huge, mostly because the nation's industrial economy demanded fuel and because mountains stood in the way of commerce. "Now, it's being shifted," Knold said. "In the technical economy, mountains aren't a barrier at all."

So the question for those pushing economic development is whether to keep the land clean and entice more people to move here or to continue with "an old industrialized structure and not maybe be able to employ as many people," Knold said.

The Sierra Club report comes down in favor of marketing beauty. Unless public land is protected, the report states, the economy can't sustain itself.

Using U.S. Commerce Department figures, the report says that Western counties where more than 60 percent of federal public land was protected grew 66 percent faster from 1970 to 2000 than counties where the same percentage of of public land was not protected.

Although the report focuses on the West as a whole, a snapshot focuses on how the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has affected Kane and Garfield counties. A 2007 Utah State University study found that 91 percent of monument visitors also stopped in the counties, spending millions of dollars at scores of businesses and supporting hundreds of full-time jobs.

It's a case of selling what you have, said Knold, whose contribution to this year's Economic Report to the Governor supports many of the Sierra Club's claims.

Although the report makes grand statements about the Western states' economies, it's really the rural areas that benefit from scenery, Knold said. Looking again at Garfield County, numbers in the governor's report show that natural resources and mining employed just eight people in 2005 - the most recent year for available numbers - while tourism employed 859.

In Grand County, when the uranium boom has played out, workers fell on hard times until tourism took hold in Moab and its surroundings. By comparison, Emery County clings to the mineral-resource economy.

"It's hard to blame them, because they are high-paying jobs," Knold said. At the same time, "Grand County has grown. Emery has not."

In areas such as Uintah County, said the Sierra Club's San Francisco spokeswoman Kristina Johnson, most of the money leaves the region, while county governments are stuck with the bill for road repairs, waste management and burgeoning crime.

At the same time, according Utah Department of Workforce Services statistics, in 2005 natural-resource extraction employed 2,519 people in Uintah County, about 22 percent of the total number of people working. Tourism employed 929.

Carbon, Duschesne and Emery counties were the only others that employed more people in extractive industries than tourism.

Tourism's low pay remains a downside. Statewide, tourism accounted for $1.4 billion in 2005 payroll wages, compared with mining and drilling's $486 million. But the average monthly pay for an extractive industries worker was $4,778, and although tourism business owners may do well, their workers made $1,100 during an average month. Knold said that includes seasonal and part-time workers.

So, although selling beauty is a better long-term prospect than drilling for riches, rural residents could end up working in "the king's land," Knold said. Park City is a good example of where successful tourism morphed a played-out mining town into something far different but not
unreservedly better.

"You'd hate to see places like Escalante and some of these other little towns" turn into that, Knold said.

UTAH CONTINUES TO TOP U.S.
FOR EMPLOYMENT GROWTH
(Source: Lesley Mitchell, Salt Lake Tribune, 8/14/07)

Utah's stellar rate of job creation, which should have slowed down by now, crept up again in July.

Utah created 56,800 jobs in the year that ended in July, for an employment growth rate of 4.7 percent, up from 4.5 percent for the year that ended in June, the Utah Department of Workforce Services reported.

Arizona is a distant second to Utah, with job growth of 3.2 percent. The national average? A paltry 1.3 percent, by comparison, down from 1.4 percent in June.

"Utah continues to have a really, really strong economy," Mark Knold, chief economist for Workforce Services, said Tuesday. "What impresses me is that our job growth is staying so high. Utah just doesn't seem vulnerable to the things that are affecting other parts of the country right now."

In much of the nation, a downturn in residential real estate markets is dragging down economic growth and job creation. But in Utah, an increase in commercial construction is "more than compensating for the drop in residential construction," Knold said.

In fact, construction industry employment in Utah is up nearly 14 percent, or about 13,700 workers, from last year.

The largest commercial project under way is the $1 billion City Creek Center, a huge development that includes a mix of retail, housing and office space in downtown Salt Lake City. The project, set for completion in 2011, is even creating jobs before much of the construction work begins. Crews in recent months have worked on the demolition of two shopping malls and other buildings to make way for the new development. Thousands of workers could have had a hand in the project by the time it is completed.

Knold noted that unlike some other regions, which are adding mainly low-wage jobs, Utah is adding a mix of low-paying and high-paying jobs in a variety of industries.

With worker shortages cropping up in a variety of industries, employers are being forced to raise wages and offer more benefits to keep and attract workers.

For employers such as Cesar Escobar, who operates the long-haul trucking company Me & Brothers Inc. in West Jordan, keeping up can be tough.

"Last year I could pay someone $8 an hour to clean the office," he said. "This year, $10 is not enough."

He said mechanics could be hired last year for around $11 an hour, while this year he's forced to pay $14 to $15 an hour.

Escobar, who has 25 employees, said he also has begun offering hiring and retention bonuses for drivers and is offering health insurance coverage to those who stay on the job at least six months.

He said he has had to make other concessions.

When one valued employee recently told him he was leaving, "I said, 'What can I do to keep you?' He said I could pay his college tuition. And I said, 'Yes.' That's how it goes around here right now."

David Little, president and CEO of Rotational Molding of Utah in Brigham City, said it is especially distressing for a small business owner to deal with worker shortages. He has raised wages across the board twice in the past year, first a 50 cent-per-hour increase, and then a $1-per-hour hike for all hourly employees. Little, whose company manufactures plastics products, also offers health insurance coverage and benefits such as a tuition-reimbursement program.

Little, who has about 35 employees, would like to hire a half-dozen more so he could expand his business. But there's none to be had. "We've been trying to find a truck driver for four weeks. You place ads everywhere you're supposed to and nothing works."

All of Utah's industries are adding jobs, according to the report. And although most are being created along the Wasatch Front, job growth is strong in most rural areas, as well.

Utah's job growth peaked at 5.4 percent in June 2006 and had been expected to gradually decline since then. Although it has slowed, the rate has unexpectedly remained right at around 4.5 percent since January.

Utah's unemployment rate was 2.7 percent in July, down even more from the super-low 2.9 percent in June 2006 and well below the national unemployment rate of 4.6 percent. Only about 36,000 Utahns were unemployed in July, compared with 38,300 in July 2006.

RESEARCH GROUP GAUGE INDICATES U.S. ECONOMY TO EXPAND MODESTLY
(Source: Candice Choi, The Associated Press, 8/20/07)

NEW YORK - A closely watched gauge of future economic activity edged up in July, reversing the previous month's decline. The recent erratic pattern reflects uncertainty in a U.S. economy roiled by a credit crunch.

The Conference Board said Monday its index of leading economic indicators rose 0.4 percent in July, as analysts were expecting. The index fell 0.3 percent in June, after rising 0.2 percent in May.

The report is designed to forecast economic activity over the next three to six months.

The index has bounced up and down over the past few months, suggesting that economic growth is likely to continue but at a slower pace. With the latest report, the cumulative change in the index over the past six months has increased 0.1 percent.

The movement of the index over the past few months mirrors the volatility of the financial markets, said Aaron Smith, senior economist with Moody's Economy.com.

While July's pickup is in line with the 3.4 percent growth of U.S. economic output in the spring, the main drivers for the latest index - consumer confidence and jobless claims - may be temporary and dip in August, Smith said.

The recent crisis in the financial markets ''has yet to manifest itself in the data,'' Smith said.

Monday's upbeat report follows the Federal Reserve's decision Friday to cut its key discount rate by a half-percentage point, a dramatic move meant to stabilize financial markets pummeled by a rapidly spreading credit crisis.

In a statement explaining the action, the central bank said that while incoming data suggest the economy is continuing to expand at a moderate pace, ''the downside risks to growth have increased appreciably.''

The Fed said it was ''monitoring the situation and is prepared to act as needed to mitigate the adverse effects on the economy arising from the disruptions in financial markets.''

The credit crunch started with rising defaults in subprime mortgages - home loans made to people with weak credit histories. Analysts believe these problems, along with declining consumer confidence, could lead to a recession.

Overall U.S. economic output, as measured by the gross domestic product, jumped in the spring to an annual rate of 3.4 percent, the fastest pace in more than a year and up sharply from 0.6 percent growth in the first three months of the year.

The Conference Board report tracks 10 economic indicators. The advancing components in July were consumer expectations, vendor performance, unemployment claims, real money supply, stock prices and manufacturers' orders for consumer goods and materials.

The negative contributors were housing permits, manufacturers' new orders for non-defense capital goods and interest rate spread. Weekly manufacturing hours held steady.

 

STOCKS SURGE AFTER FEDERAL RESERVE
CUTS DISCOUNT RATE
(Source: The Associated Press, 8/17/07)

NEW YORK - Stocks soared today, propelling the Dow Jones industrials up more than 180 points, after the Federal Reserve, acknowledging that the stock market's plunge posed a threat to the economy, slashed its discount rate by a half percentage point.

The central bank's step, which Wall Street was angling for, gave the market a boost after weeks of losses fueled by turmoil in the credit markets. The Fed has poured billions in additional liquidity into the banking system in recent days - on Friday, it added $6 billion - but the rate cut was its most dramatic effort yet to alleviate fears about tightening credit and calm the global financial markets.

The Fed cut the discount rate to 5.75 percent from 6.25 percent, declaring that "downside risks" to the economy have increased appreciably.

However, the central bank did not change its target for the federal funds rate, which has remained at 5.25 percent for more than a year. Many strategists believes the market won't settle down until the Fed lowers the fed funds rate - the rate banks charge each other on overnight loans. The discount rate only covers loans the Fed makes to banks.

It was too early to tell how much of the buying was a relief rally after weeks of losses, and whether the gains would stick. The market has quickly given back any advances it has scored in recent weeks amid growing signs of problems in the credit markets.

For investors, the question is whether the discount rate cut is a signal that the Fed is seriously leaning toward cutting the fed funds rate, considered a more important benchmark, at its next meeting on Sept. 18.

In the first hour of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average surged 180.46, or 1.40 percent, to 13,026.24. The Dow shot up more than 300 points within the first 10 minutes of trading, but then lost a chunk of those gains in the next 20 minutes in the normal ebb and flow of trading

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 25.90, or 1.84 percent, to 1,437.17, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 41.19, or 1.68 percent, to 2,492.26.

Bonds fell, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rising to 4.70 percent from 4.66 percent.

Gains were seen in all sectors of the stock market, but financial stocks, which have been battered by growing problems in mortgage lending, saw the most buying. Of the 30 companies in the Dow, JPMorgan Chase & Co. posted the biggest increase.

Major European indexes recovered substantially after the Fed's announcement from steep declines in earlier trading. Britain's FTSE 100 rose 3.43 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 2.82 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 3.13 percent.

In Asian trading, which closed before the Fed lowered the discount rate, Japan's Nikkei stock average plunged to close down 5.42 percent as the yen continued its climb against the dollar. The dollar briefly dipped below 112 yen for the first time in over a year, suggesting that some investors were taking their Japanese currency out of higher-yielding dollar assets. It later rebounded, though.

Oil prices rose $1.30 to $72.30 a barrel. Traders have been tracking the path of Hurricane Dean, swirling over the Caribbean and threatening to head west into the Gulf of Mexico - where many of the nation's oil installations are located.

Gold prices jumped. The dollar fell versus the euro and the pound.