Entries tagged with “recession”

Mass TLC annual meeting and Mandel's insight into the looming recovery

Posted by Dave Broadwin on March 31, 2010
  I attended the annual meeting of Mass TLC this morning. Michael Mandel spoke and had a bunch of great insights. I want to get to what he had to say about energy and renewables but I need to go into a few preliminary items first. Mandel starts from the premise that the most accurate measure of the state of the economy, crude though it may be, is employment. The unemployment rate is the unemployment rate. Either you are paying unemployment tax or you are not. There is no ambiguity.  Having established this as his measure of health. He showed that one industry (communications – very... More

Unemployment numbers

Posted by Dave Broadwin on July 01, 2009
Last Saturday’s Times had a number if interesting articles. In addition to the one I noted on Monday, there was an op ed piece by Bob Herbert entitled "No Recovery In Sight." The gist of his piece is that until there is a marked improvement in employment, any recovery is a hollow recovery. Of course he is right at least in so far as if people are not working then life continues to be hard even if the economy is expanding. Paul Tsongas was a Partner in our law firm, and I distinctly remember him telling a story about his... More

What are you seeing?

Posted by Dave Broadwin on March 06, 2009
What are you seeing? People seem to be asking each other this question with increasing frequency. I attended a board meeting for a client who will need to be doing a financing in the next few months, and that was the one question everyone wanted to have the answer to. There is no good answer to this question because no one is seeing anything. We all have random data points. So, here is my answer: Prepare to be horrified. Funded companies that are doing well and controlling their burn, are getting appalling down valuations from potential new investors. These valuations are often below the original “A”... More
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