The New York Times’s investigative series on polluted water continued to get results. The EPA says it will overhaul its enforcement of the Clean Water Act, meaning it says it will actually enforce it.
— Steven Pearlstein looks at the tarnishing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in recent days. Mother Jones found it had been lying about its membership total (by a factor of ten), and its “propaganda” about why it opposes reforms has been laid bare: “a rather straightforward effort to halt abuses by mortgage brokers and credit card lenders is being transformed into a regulatory power-grab that will ensnare butchers and bakers and candlestick makers.”
— About that housing market: Foreclosures in the third quarter jumped 23 percent from a year ago and 5 percent from the second quarter. Some 925,000 households got a foreclosure notice sometime between July and September.
— MSNBC has a nice graphic look at how and where the recession is hitting the country. One-fifth of metros are in technical recovery. The rest are in moderating or full-blown recession.
A reader asked, how can some of the metro areas on our msnbc.com graphic be in "recovery," if the statistics shown for that area are negative?
The answer: As the story tries to explain, Moody's status assessment (in recession, in recovery, etc.) compares six-month periods. But the stats shown on the map are one-year comparisons. (In both cases, moving averages. Read the explainer: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29866676/ns/us_news-the_elkhart_project/.)
You see where this is headed. As the story explains, if the sharpest decline was more than 6 months ago, but less than 12 months ago, then both these things will be true at the same time in areas beginning a recovery: stats will have improved over 6 months earlier, with the metro area showing up in the recovery category, and also the year-over-year stats will still be negative.
#1 Posted by Bill Dedman, CJR on Tue 20 Oct 2009 at 05:29 PM