VOL. 36 | NO. 41 | Friday, October 12, 2012
REALTY CHECK
Determining a property’s price is one of the most daunting tasks in the real estate profession. If the property is priced too low, the seller loses money. Real money. Greenbacks. In some cases, their retirement. Conversely, if a property is priced too high, it can have the same affect and cost the seller money.
REAL ESTATE
A look at Davidson County’s top lenders based on total number of all loans, commercial and residential, as compiled by Chandler Reports.
TERRY McCORMICK
Some say Rusty Smith has one of the best jobs in professional sports.
NEWSMAKERS
U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper announced today that Alfred Degrafinreid II has joined his office as counsel. Degrafinreid will be based in Nashville and will advise on policy matters and coordinate community outreach for Rep. Cooper.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
You’ve got an idea that really gets you excited.
GUERRILLA MARKETING
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” or so the slogan goes, but every time I visit Sin City I’m inspired to share how exceptionally well big brands in this congested market advertise in larger-than-life ways. Standing out from the tremendous volume of advertising clutter is the name of the game in Vegas, and marketers could learn a thing or two from this go-big-or-go-home approach.
THE WORLDLY INVESTOR
Year-to-date the MSCI World index has climbed 15 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed within 5 percent of its all-time high. The S&P 500 has returned 14.9 percent annualized over the last three years. Corporate earnings have reached a record high. Has any of this inspired investors?
SMART STUFF 4 WORK
Many people are currently asking the question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” More often than not, the people asking this question have some sort of political agenda in mind.
I SWEAR
After printing those letters last week, how can I not come back this week with more stuff from the record? How can I not?
KAY'S COOKING CORNER
Last week, I recalled our trip to Chicago and how much good food we ate. I also shared with you that in the many times that we’ve visited Chicago we’d never partaken of a Chicago Dog. But this last trip, it was a given. We were just missing out on too much! So we succumbed.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Memphis officials want the state Appeals Court to strike down a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.
STATE LEGISLATURE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The legislative aide of a state senator has been fired after it was revealed he was doing political work on state time for a Democratic state Senate candidate.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Gasoline prices have finally begun their seasonal slide.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A measure of U.S. economic activity designed to give signals about the future posted a solid gain in September, rebounding after a dip in August. But the index is still signaling weak growth.
NEW YORK (AP) — A mixed batch of earnings and economic reports kept the stock market wavering between small gains and losses Thursday. Google plunged nearly 10 percent after releasing a weak earnings report hours ahead of schedule.
The price of oil slipped below $92 a barrel Thursday as traders weighed signs of economic recovery in the U.S. and China against an increase in U.S. crude supplies.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The average U.S. rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has fallen to near its record low set earlier this month.
NEW YORK (AP) — Google Inc.'s stock plunged suddenly on Thursday afternoon after a contractor released the search company's third-quarter earnings report early, by mistake.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped 46,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, the highest in four months. The increase represents a rebound from the previous week's sharp drop. Both swings were largely due to technical factors.
NEW YORK (AP) — Newsweek plans to end its print publication after 80 years and will shift to an all-digital format aimed at online users starting in early 2013. Job cuts are expected.
Southwest Airlines eked out a small third-quarter profit in spite of a September slowdown, the company said on Thursday.
It's the latest snapshot of the growing burden of student debt and it's another discouraging one: Two-thirds of the national college class of 2011 finished school with loan debt, and those who borrowed walked off the graduation stage owing on average $26,600 — up about 5 percent from the class before.
CINCINNATI (AP) — Fifth Third Bancorp reported Thursday that its third-quarter net income fell because of one-time expenses related to debt repayment and accounting issues.
NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon's Share Everything plan looks like it's good for the company's shares, too.
NEW YORK (AP) — Morgan Stanley shares are up in pre-market trading after the bank reported higher net income and revenue for the third quarter.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - Early voting started Wednesday for the Nov. 6 presidential election and Tennessee election officials are anticipating another record turnout.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey has appointed Brian Noland, president of East Tennessee State University, and Greg Nelson, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Eastman Chemical Co., to the board of directors of the Tennessee Technology Development Corp.
NASHVILLE (AP) — U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander is receiving a decoration conferred by Japanese Emperor Akihito in recognition of his dedication to Japan-U.S. relations.
NASHVILLE AREA
FRANKLIN (AP) - With its shares trading around their highest prices in 15 years, Acadia Healthcare Co. on Wednesday registered an offering of up to $200 million in stock.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A deal to sell a financially troubled Southern Baptist camp in New Mexico to a Christian college in California has fallen through over concerns about theology.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
SUMNER, Texas (AP) — Oil has long lived in harmony with farmland and cattle across the Texas landscape, a symbiosis nurtured by generations and built on an unspoken honor code that allowed agriculture to thrive while oil was extracted.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. builders started construction on homes in September at the fastest rate since July 2008 and made plans to build even more homes in the coming months. The gains show the housing recovery is strengthening and could help the economy grow.
A surprisingly strong housing report helped push stocks modestly higher, even as weak earnings reports from Intel and IBM weighed on the Dow Jones industrial average.
The price of oil bounced around on Wednesday but finished almost where it began.
NEW YORK (AP) — Nike has severed ties with cyclist Lance Armstrong, citing insurmountable evidence that he participated in doping and misled the company about those activities for more than a decade.
NEW YORK (AP) — American Airlines parent company AMR lost $238 million in the third quarter on employee severance payouts and other costs related to its bankruptcy.
NEW YORK (AP) — For banks, mortgage-making kept profits humming before the financial crisis, then blackened reputations and stamped out earnings when the crisis hit.
NEW YORK (AP) — PepsiCo Inc.'s net income dipped 5 percent in the third quarter, as the food and beverage maker continued to pour more money into bolstering its flagship brands.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16
MIDSTATE
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — ConAgra Foods Inc. says it will close a pork-processing plant in Little Rock next year, putting more than 200 people out of work.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Education Lottery Corp. has raised a record $81 million in the first quarter.
KNOXVILLE (AP) — The Knoxville News Sentinel has ended a decades-old tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, saying it no longer has any special access to the candidates.
NASHVILLE (AP) — The flag of the United States is flying at half-staff over Tennessee government buildings and installations.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE(BUSINESS WIRE)— HCA Holdings, Inc. today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, HCA Inc., proposes to offer, subject to market and other considerations, $2 billion aggregate principal amount of senior secured notes and senior unsecured notes.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Nashville will host the seventh annual Southern Obesity Summit next fall.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Alternative Fuel Vehicles will be shown off in Nashville and a speaker will talk about the global oil supply.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Airport security needs to undergo a radical overhaul or else passengers will become further disgruntled, lines will grow and terminals will be overwhelmed, airline executives said Tuesday at a global aviation conference.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Confidence among U.S. homebuilders remains at its highest level in six years, reflecting improved optimism over the strengthening housing market this year and a pickup in visits by prospective buyers to builders' communities.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. industrial production increased only modestly in September, held back by weak growth in factory output.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Higher gas costs drove up U.S. consumer prices in September for the second straight month. But outside energy, there was little sign of inflation.
The stock market is closing with its biggest gain in a month following strong earnings from Mattel, Johnson & Johnson and other big companies.
NEW YORK (AP) — The price of oil finished slightly higher Tuesday, following a day of wavering between small gains and losses as traders mulled mixed economic data.
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft's first tablet computer, the Surface, will start at $499 when it goes on sale Oct. 26.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Coca-Cola Co. says its net income rose 3 percent in the third quarter, as the world's biggest beverage maker expanded in in emerging markets and sold more of its sports drinks and teas at home.
Vikram Pandit abruptly stepped down as CEO of Citigroup on Tuesday, surprising Wall Street, after steering the bank through the 2008 financial crisis and the choppy years that followed.
NEW YORK (AP) — Goldman Sachs easily beat analysts' estimates for earnings and revenue in the third quarter.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 56 million Social Security recipients will see their monthly payments go up by 1.7 percent next year.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 15
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) - A Hendersonville woman sickened by fungal meningitis after receiving a steroid injection for back pain is suing the pharmacy that supplied the drug.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The Tennessee Board of Pharmacy on Monday effectively revoked the license of the pharmacy that distributed injectable steroids suspected of causing a deadly outbreak of fungal meningitis.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee health officials say the number of meningitis cases in the state have increased by three since Friday.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Prior to the second presidential debate, the public is invited to discuss the tensions between free speech and civility at a forum at Lipscomb University.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Nashville Mayor Karl Dean says a new arts streetscape in the city's downtown will make dining outdoors and visiting art galleries on the street a more vibrant experience.
STATEWIDE
BRENTWOOD (AP) - A law passed to reduce taxes for farmers is also being used to drastically cut tax bills by wealthy Tennessee residents who appear to do little farming.
MIDSTATE
NASHVILLE (AP) - Federal prosecutors say a Middle Tennessee business executive has given up $500,000 in assets after an embezzlement scheme involving money paid by the Tennessee Department of Transportation to acquire rights of way for highway projects.
NASHVILLE (AP) - A Republican congressman from Tennessee is telling supporters he's not a hypocrite for discussing abortion with a mistress more than a decade ago. But now he may also have to defend his medical license.
HEALTH CARE
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two American scholars were awarded the Nobel economics prize on Monday for studies on the match-making that takes place when doctors are coupled up with hospitals, students with schools and human organs with transplant recipients.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans stepped up their spending at retail businesses in September, reflecting higher consumer confidence. The increase was driven by another strong month of auto sales and the release of the iPhone5.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. companies restocked their shelves at a solid pace in August while sales rose for a second straight month. The combination of higher stockpiles and increased sales should help to boost economic growth.
Stocks rose on Monday after a strong gain in retail spending suggested that consumers could be getting more confident about the economy. Bank stocks rose broadly after Citigroup delivered a strong earnings report.
NEW YORK (AP) — A late-day surge left oil prices virtually unchanged Monday, erasing losses of more than two percent.
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup isn't as enthusiastic as its peers about a comeback in the housing market.
MCLEAN, Va. (AP) — Gannett Co. reported higher net income and revenue on Monday, helped by strong gains in political and Olympics-related advertising.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR and Fox announced an eight-year, $2.4 billion extension Monday that runs through 2022 and keeps the prestigious Daytona 500 and first third of the Sprint Cup Series on the network.
NEW YORK (AP) — Morgan Stanley is being accused of discriminating against black homeowners and violating federal civil rights laws by providing strong incentives to a subprime lender to originate mortgages that were likely to go unrepaid.
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has alerted its Kindle customers that they are entitled to a credit on prior electronic book purchases as part of settlements between some major e-book publishers and the government.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Buyers of tablets that run Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 8, are in for a pleasant musical surprise: they'll be able to handpick from a selection of millions of songs and stream them for free as long as they put up with an audio ad every 15 minutes.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - The Internal Revenue Service reminds taxpayers who filed for an income tax filing extension the deadline is Monday.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Children's Services Commissioner Kate O'Day says her department can account for every child reported to it in a severely abusive situation.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The Tennessee Court of Appeals will hear a challenge to the new photo identification law.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) - A Texas-based development company has canceled plans to convert the existing Nashville Convention Center into a new medical trade center.
NASHVILLE (AP) - Tennessee health officials reported that the number of cases of rare fungal meningitis has increased by five to 49 cases.
MIDSTATE
NASHVILLE (AP) - An endorsement from a Tennessee congressman who in a recorded phone conversation urged a mistress to get an abortion has vanished from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's website.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee congressman, in his first public comments since reports that he once urged a mistress to get an abortion, said Thursday that the woman turned out not to be pregnant.
AUTO INDUSTRY
CHATTANOOGA (AP) — Southern states accustomed to luring investments away from the Midwest are casting a wary eye to competition from Mexico.
DETROIT (AP) — U.S. safety officials are investigating brake problems in the Honda Pilot SUV.
BERLIN (AP) — Strong sales in Eastern Europe helped Volkswagen AG post a 6.5 percent increase in September sales over the same month last year, despite difficulties caused by the European financial crisis.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — A second month of sharp gains in gasoline costs drove wholesale prices higher in September. But outside of the surge in energy, prices were well contained.
Stocks closed out their worst week since June after investors looked over third-quarter corporate earnings reports and decided there wasn't much to get excited about.
NEW YORK (AP) — Is the mortgage market really back?
The price of oil rose slightly above $92 a barrel Friday after a big fall in U.S. unemployment benefit claims suggested some improvement in the world's biggest economy, raising expectations for increased demand for energy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid plummeted last week to seasonally adjusted 339,000, the lowest level in more than four years. The sharp drop, if sustained, could signal a stronger job market.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages ticked up from record lows last week. Cheaper mortgages are fueling a modest housing recovery that could help the broader economy.