SCORECARD
Water
March 23rd 2007 Wasatch Front
Water
WEBER-OGDEN RIVERS 57% of Average
PROVO R-UTAH LAKE-JORDAN R 55% of
Average
Long-range weather forecasts predict warmer
dryer weather through April, May and June.
Flaming Gorge is 84% full
Lake Powell is 47% full
Wasatch Front Water Withdrawls by Source
and Use
Withdrawls by Source and
Use | 1985 Withdrawls (acre-feet)
| 1985 Withdrawls (%) | 1995
Withdrawls (acre-feet) | 1995 Withdrawls (%)
| 2000 Withdrawls (acre-feet)
| 2000 Withdrawls (%) |
Total
Withdrawls | 1,219,264 | 100%
| 1,227,767 | 100% |
1,372,264 | 100% |
Surface | 927,378 | 76.1
% | 963,111 | 78.4% |
999,236 | 72.8% |
Ground | 291,887 | 23.9
% | 264,111 | 21.6% |
373,445 | 27.2% |
Purpose | | |
| | | |
Public
Supply | 344,175 | 28.2%
| 402,737 | 32.8% |
512,847 | 37.4% |
Domestic Self-
Supply | 3,282 | 0.3%
| 3,797 | 0.3% |
na | na |
Industrial-Mining Self
Supply | 22,056 | 1.8%
| 42,185 | 3.4% |
57,620 | 4.2% |
Thermoelectric Power Self
Supply | 4,615 | 0.4%
| 1,456 | 0.1% |
3,181 | 0.2% |
Agricultural Self
Supply | 844,723 | 69.3%
| 775,229 | 63.1% |
799,032 | 58.2% |
Agriculture consumes 58.2% of the Wasatch
Front water but only generates 0.1% of personal
income and 0.9% of employment.
State-wide agriculture uses over 80% of the water
in Utah of which 85% is surface water.
Source: US Geological Survey, U.S. Department of
Interior, NWS, NOAA.
MANAGEMENT NOTES
The halo effect, and other managerial
delusions
Note: Mayors, City Managers, Public Officials -
Everywhere it says “corporate” or “company”
or “business” make your own appropriate
substitutions.
Companies cannot achieve superior and lasting
business performance simply by following a specific
set of steps.
The quest of every high-quality corporate executive
is to find the keys to superior performance. Achieving
market leadership is hard enough, but staying at the
top—given intense competition, rapidly changing
technology, and shifting global forces—is even more
difficult. At the same time, executives are under
enormous pressure to deliver profitable growth and
high returns for their shareholders. No wonder they
constantly search for ways to achieve competitive
advantage.
But many executives, despite their good
intentions, look in the wrong places for the insights
that will deliver an edge. Too often they reach for
books and articles that promise a reliable path to high
performance. Over the past decade, some of the most
popular business books have claimed to reveal the
blueprint for lasting success, the way to go from good
to great, or how to craft a fail-safe strategy or to make
the competition irrelevant.
At first glance, many of the pronouncements in
such works look entirely credible. They are based on
extensive data and appear to be the result of rigorous
analysis. Millions of managers read them, eager to
apply these keys to success to their own companies.
Unfortunately, many of the studies are deeply flawed
and based on questionable data that can lead to
erroneous conclusions. Worse, they give rise to the
especially grievous notion that business success
follows predictably from implementing a few key
steps. In promoting this idea, authors obscure a more
basic truth—namely, that in the business world
success is the result of decisions made under
conditions of uncertainty and shaped in part by factors
outside our control. In the real world, given the flux of
competitive dynamics, even seemingly good choices
do not always lead to favorable outcomes.
Rather than succumb to the hyperbole and false
promises found in so much management writing,
business strategists would do far better to improve
their powers of critical thinking. Wise executives
should be able to think clearly about the quality of
research claims and to detect some of the egregious
errors that pervade the business world. Indeed, the
capacity for critical thinking is an important asset for
any business strategist—one that allows the executive
to cut through the clutter and to discard the delusions,
embracing instead a more realistic understanding of
business success and failure.
As a first step, it’s important to identify some of the
misperceptions and delusions commonly found in the
business world. Then, using these insights, we might
replace flawed thinking with a more acute method of
approaching strategic decisions.
Beware the halo effect
Many studies of company performance are
undermined by a problem known as the halo effect.
First identified by US psychologist Edward Thorndike
in 1920, it describes the tendency to make specific
inferences on the basis of a general impression.
How does the halo effect manifest itself in the
business world? Imagine a company that is doing
well, with rising sales, high profits, and a sharply
increasing stock price. The tendency is to infer that the
company has a sound strategy, a visionary leader,
motivated employees, an excellent customer
orientation, a vibrant culture, and so on. But when that
same company suffers a decline—if sales fall and
profits shrink—many people are quick to conclude that
the company’s strategy went wrong, its people
became complacent, it neglected its customers, its
culture became stodgy, and more. In fact, these things
may not have changed much, if at all. Rather,
company performance, good or bad, creates an
overall impression—a halo—that shapes how we
perceive its strategy, leaders, employees, culture, and
other elements.
As an example, when Cisco Systems was
growing rapidly, in the late 1990s, it was widely
praised by journalists and researchers for its brilliant
strategy, masterful management of acquisitions, and
superb customer focus. When the tech bubble burst,
many of the same observers were quick to make the
opposite attributions: Cisco, the journalists and
researchers claimed, now had a flawed strategy,
haphazard acquisition management, and poor
customer relations. On closer examination, Cisco
really had not changed much—a decline in its
performance led people to see the company
differently. Indeed, Cisco staged a remarkable
turnaround and today is still one of the leading tech
companies. The same thing happened at ABB, the
Swiss-Swedish engineering giant. In the 1990s, when
its performance was strong, ABB was lauded for its
elegant matrix design, risk-taking culture, and
charismatic chief executive, Percy Barnevik. Later,
when the company’s performance fell, ABB was
roundly criticized for having a dysfunctional
organization, a chaotic culture, and an arrogant CEO.
But again, the company had not really changed much.
The fact is that many everyday concepts in
business—including leadership, corporate culture,
core competencies, and customer orientation—are
ambiguous and difficult to define. We often infer
perceptions of them from something else, which
appears to be more concrete and tangible: namely,
financial performance. As a result, many of the things
that we commonly believe are contributions to
company performance are in fact attributions. In other
words, outcomes can be mistaken for inputs.
Wise managers know to be wary of the halo effect.
They look for independent evidence rather than merely
accepting the idea that a successful company has a
visionary leader and a superb customer orientation or
that a struggling company must have a poor strategy
and weak execution. They ask themselves, “If I didn’t
know how the company was performing, what would I
think about its culture, execution, or customer
orientation?” They know that as long as their
judgments are merely attributions reflecting a
company’s performance, their logic will be circular.
The halo effect is especially damaging because it
often compromises the quality of data used in
research. Indeed, many studies of business
performance—as well as some articles that have
appeared in journals such as Harvard Business
Review and The McKinsey Quarterly and in academic
business journals—rely on data contaminated by the
halo effect. These studies praise themselves for the
vast amount of data they have accrued but overlook
the fact that if the data aren’t valid, it really doesn’t
matter how much was gathered or how sophisticated
the analysis appears to be.
This reliance on questionable data, in turn, gives
rise to a number of further errors in logic. Two
delusions—of absolute performance and of lasting
success—have particularly serious repercussions for
business strategists.
The delusion of absolute
performance
One of the most seductive claims in business
best sellers is that a company can achieve success if
it follows a specific set of steps. Some recent books
are explicit on this point, claiming that a company
hewing to a certain formula is virtually sure to become
a great performer. On closer inspection these studies
rely on sources of data (including retrospective
interviews, articles from the business press, and
business school case studies) that are routinely
undermined by the halo effect. Whereas a given set of
factors may appear to have led predictably to success,
the reverse is more likely—it would be more accurate
to say that successful companies tended to be
described in the same way. The direction of causality
is wrong.
Following a given formula can’t ensure high
performance, and for a simple reason: in a
competitive market economy, performance is
fundamentally relative, not absolute. Success and
failure depend not only on a company’s actions but
also on those of its rivals. A company can improve its
operations in many ways—better quality, lower cost,
faster throughput time, superior asset management,
and more—but if rivals improve at a faster rate, its
performance may suffer.
Consider General Motors. In 2005 GM’s debt was
reduced to junk bond status—hardly a vote of
confidence from financial markets. Yet compared with
the automobiles GM produced in the 1980s, its cars
today boast better quality, additional features, superior
comfort, and improved safety. Owing to myriad factors,
including the increased prominence of Japanese and
South Korean automakers, GM’s share of the US
market keeps slipping, from 35 percent in 1990 to 29
percent in 1999 and 25 percent in 2005. Its declining
performance must be understood in relative terms.
Paradoxi-cally, the rigors of competition from Asian
automakers are precisely what have stimulated GM to
improve. Is GM a better automaker than it was a
generation ago? Yes, if we look at absolute
measures. But that’s little comfort to its employees or
shareholders.
The delusion of absolute performance is very
important because it suggests that a company can
achieve high performance by following a simple
formula, regardless of the actions of competitors. If left
unchecked, executives may avoid decisions that,
although risky, could be essential for success. Once
we see that performance is relative, however, it
becomes obvious that a company can never achieve
success simply by following certain steps, no matter
how serious its intentions. High performance comes
from doing things better than rivals can, which means
that managers have to take risks. This uncomfortable
truth recognizes that some elements of business
performance are beyond our control, yet it is an
essential concept that clear-thinking executives must
grasp.
The delusion of lasting success
The halo effect leads to a second misconception
about the performance of companies: that they can
achieve enduring success in a predictable way. These
studies typically begin by selecting a group of
companies that have outperformed the market for
many years and then gather data to try and distill what
led to that high performance. Regrettably, however,
much of the data come from sources that are
commonly contaminated by the halo effect. What the
authors claim to be the causes of long-term
performance are more accurately understood as
attributions made about companies that had been
selected precisely for their long-term performance.
In fact, lasting success is largely a delusion, a
statistical anomaly. As McKinsey’s Richard Foster and
Sarah Kaplan showed,1 corporate longevity is neither
very likely nor, when we find it, generally associated
with high performance. On the whole, if we look at the
full population of companies over time, there’s a
strong tendency for extreme performance in one time
period to be followed by less extreme performance in
the next. Suggesting that companies can follow a
blueprint to achieve lasting success may be
appealing, but it’s not supported by the evidence.
High performance is difficult for companies to
maintain, for an obvious reason: in a free-market
economy, profits tend to decline as a result of
imitation and competition. Rivals copy the leader’s
winning ways, new companies enter the market, best
practices are diffused, and employees move from one
company to another. Of course, it is always possible
to pick out a handful of enduring success stories after
the fact. Then if we study those companies by relying
on data that are suffused with the halo effect, we may
think we have discovered the keys to success. In fact,
we have only managed to show how successful
companies were described—an entirely different
matter.
The delusion of lasting success is a serious
matter because it casts building an enduringly high-
performing company as an achievable objective. Yet
companies that outperform the market for long
periods of time are not just rare but statistical
anomalies whose apparent greatness is observable
only in retrospect. More accurately, companies that
enjoy long-term success have probably done so by
stringing together many short-term successes, not
because they somehow unlocked the secrets of
sustained greatness. Unfortunately, pursuing a dream
of enduring greatness may divert attention from the
need to win more immediate battles.
Clear thinking for business
strategists
These points, taken together, expose the principal
fiction at the heart of so many popular business books
and articles: that following a few key steps will
inevitably lead to greatness and that a company’s
success is of its own making and not often shaped by
external factors.
The simple fact is that no formula can guarantee a
company’s success, at least not in a competitive
business environment. This truth may seem
disappointing. Many managers would like to find a
formula that can be easily applied—a tidy plug-and-
play solution that ensures success. But on reflection,
the absence of a simple success formula should not
be disappointing at all. Indeed, it might even come as
a relief. If success could be reduced to a formula,
companies would not need strategic thinking but
could rely on administrators to tick the right boxes and
ensure that formulas were followed with precision.
What makes strategic decision making so difficult,
and therefore so valuable to companies, is precisely
that there are no guaranteed keys to success. The
ability to make the sorts of difficult, complex
judgments that are pivotal for a company’s fortunes is,
in the last analysis, a business executive’s most
important contribution. Here are some approaches
that may help.
Recognize the role of uncertainty
Rather than search in vain for success formulas,
business executives would do better to adjust their
thinking about the context of strategic decisions. As a
first step, they should recognize the fundamental
uncertainty of the business world. Doing so does not
come naturally. People want the world to make sense,
to be predictable, and to follow clear rules of cause
and effect. Managers want to believe that their
business world is similarly predictable, that specific
actions will lead to certain outcomes. Yet strategic
choice is inevitably an exercise in decision making
under uncertainty. Another source of uncertainty
involves customers: will they embrace or reject a new
product or service? Even if a company accurately
anticipates what customers will do, it has to contend
with the unpredictable actions of new and old
competitors.
A third source of uncertainty comes from
technological change. Whereas some industries are
relatively stable, with products that don’t change much
and customer demand that remains fairly steady,
others change rapidly and in unpredictable ways. A
final source of uncertainty concerns internal
capabilities. Managers can’t tell exactly how a
company—with its particular people, skills, and
experiences—will respond to a new course of action.
Our best efforts to isolate and understand the inner
workings of organizations will be moderately
successful at best. Combine these factors and it
becomes clear why strategy involves decisions made
under uncertainty.
See the world through probabilities
Faced with this basic uncertainty, wise managers
approach problems as interlocking probabilities. Their
objective is not to find keys to guaranteed success but
to improve the odds through a thoughtful
consideration of factors. Some of these are outside
the company—including industry forces, customer
trends, and the intentions of competitors. Others are
internal—capabilities, resources, and risk
preferences. On the foundation of that analysis, the
role of the business strategist is to make decisions
that improve a company’s chances for success while
never imagining that a company can simply will its
success.
Rather, the goal should be gathering accurate
information and subjecting it to careful scrutiny in
order to improve the odds of success. As former US
Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs executive
Robert E. Rubin wrote in his memoirs,2 “Once you’ve
internalized the concept that you can’t prove anything
in absolute terms, life becomes all the more about
odds, chances, and trade-offs. In a world without
provable truths, the only way to refine the probabilities
that remain is through greater knowledge and
understanding.” Wise managers know that business
is about finding ways to improve the odds of
success—but never imagine that it is a certainty.
Separate inputs from outcomes
Finally, clear-thinking executives know that in an
uncertain world, actions and outcomes are imperfectly
linked. It’s easy to infer that good outcomes result
from good decisions and that bad outcomes must
mean someone blundered. Yet the fact that a given
choice didn’t turn out well doesn’t always mean it was
a mistake. Therefore it’s important to examine the
decision process itself and not just the outcome. Had
the right information been gathered or had some
important data been overlooked? Were the
assumptions reasonable or were they flawed? Were
calculations accurate or had there been errors? Had
the full set of eventualities been identified and their
impact estimated? Had the company’s strategic
position and risk preference been considered
properly?
This sort of rigorous analysis, with outcomes
separated from inputs, requires the extra mental step
of judging actions on their merits rather than simply
making after-the-fact attributions, favorable or
unfavorable. Good decisions don’t always lead to
favorable outcomes, and unfavorable outcomes are
not always the result of mistakes. Wise managers
resist the natural tendency to make attributions based
solely on outcomes. They avoid the halo bestowed by
performance and insist on independent evidence.
Our business world is full of research and
analysis that are comforting to managers: that
success can be yours by following a formula, that
specific actions will lead to predictable outcomes, and
that greatness can be achieved no matter what rivals
do. The truth is very different: the business world is not
a place of clear causal relationships, where a given
set of actions leads to predictable results, but one that
is more tenuous and uncertain.
The task of strategic leadership is therefore not to
follow a given formula or set of steps. Instead it is to
gather appropriate information, evaluate it thoughtfully,
and make choices that provide the best chance for the
company to succeed, all the while recognizing the
fundamental nature of business uncertainty.
Paradoxically, a sober understanding of this risk—
along with an appreciation of the relative nature of
performance and the general tendency for
performance to regress—may offer the best basis for
guiding effective decisions. These complex decisions,
made without any guarantee of success, are
ultimately the main contribution of business
strategists. If a set of steps that could guarantee
success did exist, and if greatness were indeed
simply a matter of will, then the value of clear thinking
in business would be lower, not greater.
Source: McKinsey & Company, 2007
Energy Costs Color Data Center
Boom
Propelled by requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act and the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as a surge in
Internet traffic, data center development is enjoying a
revival as companies scramble to find places to store
sensitive data. Unlike the data centers built during the
1990s tech boom, companies this time around are
paying closer attention to energy costs.
The data center market is “the fastest-growing
sector of the site selection field right now,” says John
Boyd, founder and president of Princeton, N.J.-based
site selection consulting firm The Boyd Co. Inc.
Because of the centers’ hefty contributions to local tax
rolls and their addition of high-paying jobs, Boyd
says, “this is the new coveted type of corporate facility
that mayors and governors are trying to attract to their
communities.”
A prime example: Microsoft Corp. announced in
January that it will build a $550 million, 400,000 sq. ft.
data center on 44 acres in San Antonio. The center will
employ about 75 full-time workers who will earn up to
$70,000 a year. Government officials, who are
granting tax breaks for the center, expect the project to
reap more than $20 million in economic benefits over
20 years.
Experts say that nearly all of the data-center
remnants of the tech wreck now are occupied and that
the number of new data centers being developed is
on the rise. In the first half of 2006, for example,
demand for U.S. data centers climbed nearly 13%
compared with the same period in 2005, according to
Tier1 Research, an information technology and
telecommunications analysis firm in Minneapolis.
Meanwhile, new supply inched up by 3.7% during that
period.
The power of power
Communities best suited to lure data centers
have readily available low-cost power, experts say. As
computer servers stored inside data centers devour
an increasing amount of energy, the need to tap a
cheaper source of power is critical. Microsoft picked
San Antonio over neighboring Austin because
electricity is 2 cents per kilowatt-hour more expensive
in Austin, according to Tom Freeman, senior vice
president in the global data center practice at Chicago-
based real estate services company Jones Lang
LaSalle Inc. Freeman worked on the Microsoft deal.
A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy equaling 1
kilowatt of power used for one hour. Consumption of
power by homes and small businesses typically is
measured in kilowatt-hours. Larger businesses and
other big users of power often apply the megawatt-
hour measurement. One megawatt-hour equals 1,000
kilowatt hours.
Bill Kosik, managing principal in the Chicago
office of information technology consulting firm EYP
Mission Critical Facilities Inc., says that five to seven
years ago, a server cabinet — a refrigerator-sized
metal box that houses the computer equipment —
typically contained about 40 servers with a total
capacity of 5 to 6 megawatts. With the advent of
slimmer, higher-density blade servers, however, 60 to
80 servers gobbling up to four times as much energy
can fit into the same data-center cabinet, Kosik says.
Given the energy considerations, location can
make or break a data center. Experts say it costs
roughly $1,000 to $2,000 per sq. ft. to build a fully
equipped data center in the United States. The price
rises exponentially for each penny added to the cost of
power per kilowatt-hour. For instance, a data center
that can accommodate 40 megawatts of electricity
would pay an extra $2 million in annual operating
costs, Freeman says. A new study commissioned by
chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. found that in
2005, power consumption by U.S. data centers —
including servers, cooling systems and auxiliary
equipment — amounted to about 45 billion kilowatt-
hours. The total utility bill: $2.7 billion.
An abundance of cheap electricity is why central
Washington has become a hotbed for data centers,
with Microsoft, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. scooping
up sites in the region. Electricity in that area, where
hydropower is king, costs about 3 cents per kilowatt-
hour, Freeman says, compared with about 14 cents
per kilowatt-hour in Los Angeles.
A 50-city study recently released by The Boyd Co.
Inc. found Sioux Falls, S.D., to be the least expensive
U.S. location to operate a hypothetical, newly
constructed 150,000 sq. ft. health care data center
with a workforce of 150. Annual operating tab: $16.1
million. The most expensive place was New York City,
where yearly operating expenses reached $22.5
million.
Aside from central Washington, U.S. hot spots for
data centers include Northern Virginia, Atlanta, San
Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Chicago, according to
Freeman. In addition to power costs, considerations
in choosing a site include access to fiber-optic
networks and IT talent, experts say.
Data-center upswing
Buyer demand also has made the data-center
market increasingly liquid. Last year, San Francisco-
based Digital Realty Trust Inc. spent $552.5 million to
buy 17 data-center properties in the United States and
Europe. In 2006, the REIT leased about 300,000 sq. ft.
of data-center space to single and multitenant users.
Unlike the last go-round, this growth spurt
appears to have legs, as 77% of respondents in a
2006 AFCOM survey indicated that they planned to
relocate or make major improvements to their data
centers by 2016. AFCOM, based in Orange, Calif., is a
trade association for data-center professionals.
Rob Kennedy, managing director at Dallas-based
Stream Realty Partners LP, is marketing for sale a
150,000 sq. ft. speculative shell in the Dallas suburb
of Plano that it built to house a data center. The firm is
considering development of at least three or four more
data-center shells, with Atlanta, Dallas, Denver and
Phoenix among the prospective markets.
Foster City, Calif.-based Equinix Inc. also is riding
the new data-center wave. Howard Horowitz, vice
president of real estate at the data-center services
provider, says Equinix operates 16 domestic data
centers and four in Asia, with three more in the U.S.
pipeline and a fifth on the way in Asia.
Horowitz says he thinks the current demand for
data centers is sustainable. That stands in sharp
contrast to the tech frenzy of a few years ago, when
artificial demand hinged on “pie-in-the-sky
projections,” Horowitz says. “Then, there was a mad
rush to market.”
Source: NREI, 2007
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Greetings!
Blight Busters/Developer Incentives/Eminent
Domain
- Wasatch Front Water
- Interested in what the Utah Legislature did to
Redevelopment?
- Interested in what the Utah Legislature did to
Economic Development?
- Interested in what the Utah Legislature did to
Eminent Domain?
Bonneville Research has prepared a short and
understandable presentation that can answer these
questions!
- If you are a city wondering how to “turn a problem
area around” – give us a call!
- If you are wondering how to create an effective “a
public/private partnership” – give us a call!
- If you are a city worried that you're “getting
gouged” by a developer asking for incentives – give us
a call!
- If you are a developer wondering how to make a
marginal project work – give us a call!
- If you are a city wondering how much TIF and
sales tax revenues might be available – give us a call!
- If you are a city worried that the newly
proposed "big box" is going to force your local
business to close – give us a call!
Bonneville Research would like to help you with
these challenges!
Bonneville Research
801-364-5300
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Utah Economic Snapshot |
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Utah Labor Market Indicators – February
2007 (Jan 07)
Utah
- Employment Growth: 4.4% (4.5%)
- Employment Increase: 52,000 (52,400)
- Unemployment Rate: 2.3% (2.7%)
United States
- Employment Growth: 1.5% (1.6%)
- Unemployment Rate: 4.5% (4.6%)
Source: Utah Dept of Workforce Services
Where the Jobs Are – February 2007 (Jan
07) – Change over Feb 06 (Jan 06)
- Salt Lake County + 26,010 +4.5% (25,076
+4.5%)
- Utah County + 8,753 +5.1% (8,768 +5.1%)
- Washington County + 3,668 +7.4% (3,738 +7.6%)
- Davis County + 3,196 +3.3% (3,921 +4.1%)
- Weber County + 2,289 +2.5% (2,270 +2.5%)
- Uintah County + 1,469 +11.6%
- Cache County + 1,460 +3.1%
- Iron County + 1,090 +6.6%
- Wasatch County + 914 +15.2%
Note: Salt Lake County represents 49% of all new
job growth in the State.
What kinds of Jobs – February 2007 (Jan
07) – Change over Feb 06 (Jan 06)
- Specialty Trade Contractors
+9,700 +16.8%
(9,800 +17.4%)
- Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
+5,700 +9.7% (5,800 +10.1%)
- Health Services and Social Assistance +3,800
+3.8% (3,800 +3.1%)
- Accommodation and Food Services +2,800 +3.1 %
(2,700 +7.6%)
- Construction of Buildings +2,800 +14.3% (2,700
+14.0%)
Note: Service jobs represent 63% of all new job
growth in the State.
Source: Utah Dept of Workforce Services, 3.20.07
Tax Snapshot – Eight Months FY2007 (Seven
Mo #’s)
- Sales and Use Taxes (Gen Gov’t)
(+1.8%) (+3.1%)
- Individual Income Taxes (Education) (+7.9%)
(+5.7%)
- Corporate Franchise Taxes (Gen Gov’t)
(+23.6%) (+25.4%)
- Motor Fuel Taxes (Transportation) (-4.1%)
(-2.2%)
- Severance Taxes (Gen Gov’t) (-22.5%)
(+11.2%)
Source: Utah State Tax Commission, 3/15/07
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Looking for a new identity on the cheap? Just go online |
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Anyone looking for a new identity - a bank account,
credit card, government identification number and
date of birth - need look no further than the internet,
where one can be bought for as little as $14 (£7).
A US credit card costs just $1, a UK credit card
about $2, and access to someone else's online bank
account can be had for $300, according to the latest
security report from Symantec, the US internet security
company.
The report sheds light on the thriving underground
economy where stolen bank account and identity
details are traded in internet chat rooms. A Symantec
team monitored internet chats over the past six
months to compile a rough price list. Dean Turner,
senior researcher on the project, said there
were "hundreds if not thousands" of internet chat sites
where trades could be made. "We were looking at the
tip of the iceberg. The problem is likely to be much
worse than we can portray."
Various hacking tools are bought and sold on the
chat sites. Spammers can pick up a list of 29,000 e-
mail addresses for $5. Details of a computer that has
been hacked into and can be controlled externally by a
hacker can be bought for between $6 and $20.
Some of the pricing uncovered by Symantec was
surprising. Credit card details sold for just a few
dollars while a PayPal account could cost up to $500.
A Skype account cost $12 and even an account for the
World of Warcraft online role-playing game could be
sold for $10.
Mr Turner said the prices reflected how much use
criminals were likely to get away with: financial
institutions policed credit cards so tightly that a stolen
card number was usable for only a few days or even
hours.
An online game would not be subject to the same
scrutiny. Role-playing games had a thriving economy
of their own, where characters and their equipment
were traded for real money. Hackers had started to
target the sites, stealing passwords and selling virtual
assets.
Theft of game passwords was rife in Asia, where
online games were popular, he said. The report,
published today, shows another rise in the stealing of
confidential information. Attempts at information theft
account for 45 per cent of the most serious internet
attacks examined by Symantec, up from 23 per cent
six months ago.
Source: The Financial Times, 2007
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Housing Grants |
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Provide Assisted Living Facilities!
- Assisted Living Conversion Program for Eligible
Multifamily Housing Projects
- POSTED: 3/14/2007
- FUNDING SOURCE: HUD
- ELIGIBILITY: Private nonprofit owners of
multifamily assisted living housing developments
- $ AVAILABLE: $30,000,000 GRANTS AVAILABLE:
N.A.
- MAX GRANT SIZE: N.A.
- DEADLINE: 6/7/07
- CONTACT INFORMATION: Faye Norman, 202-708-
3000 x 2480
- DESCRIPTION: Grants to convert some or all of
the dwelling units in an eligible project into assisted
living facilities (ALFs) for frail elderly persons.
Increase Homeownership!
- Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program
(SHOP)
- POSTED: 3/14/2007
- FUNDING SOURCE: HUD
- ELIGIBILITY: Nonprofit consortiums
- $ AVAILABLE: $19,800,000
- GRANTS AVAILABLE: N.A.
- MAX GRANT SIZE: N.A.
- DEADLINE: 6/13/07
- CONTACT INFORMATION: Lou Thompson, 202-
708-2684
- DESCRIPTION: Grants for a variety of approaches
that encourage homeownership through self-help
programs.
Build New Affordable Housing for the Elderly!
- Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly
Program
- POSTED: 3/14/2007
- FUNDING SOURCE: HUD
- ELIGIBILITY: Nonprofits
- $ AVAILABLE: $431,500,000
- GRANTS AVAILABLE: N.A.
- MAX GRANT SIZE: N.A.
- DEADLINE: 5/25/07
- CONTACT INFORMATION: Alicia Anderson, 202-
708-3000
- DESCRIPTION: Funds for the development and
operation of supportive housing for very
- low-
income persons 62 years of age or older.
Build New Housing for Persons With
Disabilities!
- Section 811 Program of Supportive Housing for
Persons With Disabilities
- POSTED: 3/14/2007
- FUNDING SOURCE: HUD
- ELIGIBILITY: Nonprofits
- $ AVAILABLE: $88,300,000
- GRANTS AVAILABLE: N.A.
- MAX GRANT SIZE: N.A.
- DEADLINE: 5/24/07
- CONTACT INFORMATION: Frank Tolliver, 202-708-
3000
- DESCRIPTION: Funds to develop and operate
supportive housing for very low-income persons with
disabilities who are at least 18 years old.
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Economic Notes: |
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- Global Business Confidence
- Global business sentiment remains steadfast in
the range that has prevailed since last summer,
consistent with global growth that is just below its
potential. Businesses have become a bit more upbeat
since the end of last year, led by firmer confidence
among high-tech firms and the end of the downdraft in
confidence among real estate and transportation
companies evident throughout most of last year.
Sentiment is stronger in South America and Asia,
where it is consistent with just above trend growth,
and softer in North America and Europe, where it is
consistent with growth that is just below trend.
Businesses are reporting that their fixed investment
and hiring has picked up in recent weeks.
- NAHB Housing Market Index
- Homebuilder optimism decreased three points to
36 in March. Overall, the index is down noticeably in
every component except traffic of prospective buyers,
which dropped from 29 to 28. However, 28 is an
exceedingly low number and indicates the housing
market may represent a significant drag on the
economy this spring, especially since the Fed does
not seem willing to adjust the interest rate target.
- New Residential Construction (C20)
- Housing starts increased 9.0% to 1.525 million
units in February. Housing permits decreased 2.5%
during the month. An uptick in housing starts from
January to February is expected. Next month will give a
clearer signal if the housing market is going to slow
economic growth this year.
- MBA Mortgage Applications Survey
- Mortgage demand decreased 2.7% in the week
ending March 16. Purchase applications decreased
0.9% and refinance applications decreased 4.5%. The
housing market is flat and dampening domestic
growth, but purchases fell only modestly as the
primary housing market gets under way for much of
the country. Optimists are focused on the FOMC
meetings that conclude today, hoping for a rate cut to
stimulate this market.
- Chain Store Sales
- Chain store sales rose 0.4% in the week ending
March 17. The latest gain comes on the heels of a
0.7% increase the week prior. Year-over-year growth
improved to 2.7%, a four-week high. Warm weather
reportedly supported sales in the latest week.
- Oil and Gas Inventories
- Crude oil inventories rose by 4 million barrels for
the week ending March 16, according to the Energy
Information Administration, far above expectations of
an 800,000 barrel build. Gasoline stocks fell by 3.4
million barrels, far greater than the 1.7 million barrel
draw expected. Refinery activity held steady. Distillate
inventories fell 1.7 million barrels, above the 1.3
million barrel draw expected. Despite the surprise
build in crude, the sharp draw in gasoline makes this
a bullish report for prices.
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This Weeks Leads: |
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- Greenberry’s Coffee & Tea
- Greenberry’s Coffee & Tea operates seven
locations throughout VA.
- The coffee shops
occupy spaces of 1,100 sq.ft. to 2,000 sq.ft. in
freestanding locations, specialty and strip centers and
downtown areas.
- Plans call for 10 openings
throughout metro Washington, DC during the coming
18 months, with representation by JBG Rosenfeld
Retail.
- For more information, contact
-
John Mitchell or Billy Orlove,
- JBG Rosenfeld
Retail,
- 4445 Willard Avenue, Suite 700,
- Chevy
Chase, MD 20815;
- 301-657-0700,
- Fax 301-
657-9850;
- Email: jmitchell@jbgr.com;
-
Website: www.greenberryscoffee.com.
- Mori Luggage & Gifts and Mori Classics
- Mori Luggage & Gifts, Inc. trades as Mori Luggage
& Gifts and Mori Classics.
- The 27-unit chain
operates locations throughout AL, FL, GA, SC and TN.
- The shops, selling luggage and gift items, occupy
spaces of 2,000 sq.ft. to 2,500 sq.ft. in malls and
lifestyle centers.
- Plans call for three openings
throughout the existing markets during the coming 18
months.
- Typical leases run seven to 10 years.
- A vanilla shell and specific improvements are
required.
- Preferred cotenants include Neiman
Marcus, Nordstrom and Saks.
- Preferred
demographics include a population of 300,000 within
four miles earning $60,000 as the average household
income.
- Competition is cited as department
stores.
- Mail site submittals to:
- Jean Mori,
- Mori Luggage & Gifts, Inc.,
- 3595 McCall
Place,
- Atlanta, GA 30340-2801;
- Web site:
www.moriluggage.com
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BONNEVILLE RESEARCH |
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Bonneville Research lies by the quality and
relevance of our client work.
Bonneville Research is committed to
excellence.
- We live where we work.
- We don't "parachute"
in, prepare a "canned" report, and then fly out of
town.
We work to help clients achieve enduring results
and improve the communities in which we live.
If you need a superior team of outstanding people
working fluidly together to solve your toughest
problems.
If you need someone who can work side-by-side
with you together to achieve your mission.
If you need results that enure.
Think Bonneville Research
BONNEVILLE RESEARCH
Bonneville Research is a Utah-based consulting
firm providing economic, financial, market and policy
research to public and private sector clients
throughout the intermountain west.
Our services include: - Urban
Renewal/Redevelopment Analysis and
Budgets
- "Blight" Studies
- Benefit Analysis
- Financial Analysis
- Project Area
Budgets
- Strategy and Policy Analysis
- Economic and Fiscal Impact Analysis
- Statistical and Survey Research
Each of our studies is tailored to address the
unique needs of our clients and their communities.
If we can help, please call or email us at
- Bob
- 801-364-5300
- BobSpring@BonnevilleResearch.com
- Jon
- 801-746-5706
-
JonSpring@BonnevilleResearch.com
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