Recently in Atlanta Economy Category

Maybe it is a sign that Atlanta's economy is coming back, but the building housing the W Hotel Buckhead is no longer facing foreclosure, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Noble Investment Group, which is headed by noted businessman Mit Shah, was able to restructure a loan with Prudential worth a cool $62 million. The building is considered a new icon in Atlanta because its interior is designed by Thom Filicia (of Queer Eye fame) and offers a rooftop bar operated by Rande Gerber (owner of Sky Bar and husband of Cindy Crawford).

Noble Investment Group and Mit Shah, meanwhile, are setting their eyes on a new hotel project in Atlanta: a 150-room Hyatt House in Cobb County's Overland Park.

Bank of America's announcement that it would charge $5 a month to use a debit card created enough of a backlash that other banks won't be charging monthly debit card fees, reports the Wall Street Journal.

It took JP Morgan Chase bank eight months of consumer testing to figure out the obvious: that people wouldn't be happy with getting charged a monthly debit card fee, reports the WSJ. Other banks that won't charge monthly debit card fees includes Citibank, Key Bank, US Bank, and PNC.

Atlanta is one of the few cities in the world with multiple locations of the W Hotel. But it hasn't been a good year for the luxury lodging in Atlanta, with the W Hotel Midtown serving as the location of the freak accident involving the death of the model LaShawnaThreatt, who fell to her death when a 10h floor window of the W Hotel Midtown shattered.

Now comes the news that building in which the W Hotel Buckhead is located is facing foreclosure, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This news obviously doesn't compare with the loss of life, as was the case in the death of LaShawna Threatt, but it is still pretty serious.

Bad news for the financially troubled in the Peach State: Job losses in Atlanta are highest among U.S. metro areas, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Atlanta lost 38,000 jobs since August 2010. The next worse-off city was Kansas City, which lost 12,800 jobs in that time. Atlanta fared much, much, worse compared to the other big metro areas, most of whom added jobs in this time. For example, Boston, New York, Houston, and Dallas, all added upwards of 50,000 jobs, reports the AJC.

Georgia's theatre group, Georgia Shakespeare, is in a lot of economic hotwater and has been forced to launch a "Save the Theatre" campaign, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The performance company, which focuses on Shakespeare, as well as other major dramatic pieces, must raise $150,000 to prevent closing its doors.

Georgia Shakespeare finds itself struggling at around the same time as other artistic companies in Georgia, such as Actor's Express Theatre, which needed an infusion of $200,000, reports the AJC. Georgia Shakespeare's operating cost is $1.5 million per year, and unlike Hamlet, hasn't been in the black for some time. Donations can be made at: www.gashakespeare.org

The President Barack Obama Job Creation Plan coming out in September may owe a good bit to the pioneering Georgia Works program that provides unemployed training.

The Georgia Works program permits individuals receiving unemployment insurance to be placed at a local company for up to eight weeks of unpaid unemployed training that can help them get a job down the road, reports CNN Money.

During a rural bus trip President Obama praised the program: “There is a smart program in Georgia,” he said. “You’re essentially earning a salary and getting your foot in the door into that company.” This might have been a hint that this kind of program would be part of any Obama job creation plan.

Previously on this blog we discussed that a decline in bankruptcies is not a good sign for the economy.

Now an expert from the Washington Post is arguing that the entire economic downturn should be understood as a household debt problem.

In an article called "It's the household debt, stupid," Ezra Klein writes: "In this crisis, indebted households can't spend, which means businesses can't spend, which means that unless government steps into the breach in a massive way or until households work through their debt burden, we can't recover" (emphasis added).

Add Social Security disability benefits ("SSI disability") to the many things facing insolvency in the current economy.

In fact, new Congressional estimates say that SSI disability will run out of money by 2017, reports the Associated Press. Unless more money is apportioned to the SSI Disability program by then, it will only be able to pay 85 percent of its benefits.

This news comes at a time when many more people, including in Georgia, are wondering about how to get disability benefits. This year, reports AP, about 3.3 million people are likely to apply for federal disability benefits.

The bureaucratic red-tape of the Atlanta food stamp system was recently highlighted on FindLaw's Atlanta Bankruptcy Law News blog.

But the food services the government provides are no less important than the medical services that sick individuals in Georgia need. And there is no greater need for medicine than among Georgia's HIV infected patients, reports the Georgia Voice.

The graphs are mostly pointing down for Atlanta real estate.

That is one way to understand a report by Standard & Poor's which studied the state of housing prices across the twenty biggest housing markets around America. Between May 2010 and May 2011 house prices in Atlanta fell by 4.6 %. This is not as bad as Tampa (-9.5%) or Minneapolis (-11.6%) but is no way good news for the area. In that time period only Washington DC saw an increase in home prices, a meager gain of 1.3%.