Tag Archives: energy

Current Economic Situation, COVID-19, 4/16/2020

This hasn’t been a good news week on most fronts. Keep reading for some bright spots at the end of this article. The U.S. Department of Labor released a glimmer of good news this morning, announcing Americans filed 5.2 million new unemployment claims the week ending April 11. That is down by 1.37 million from an adjusted 6.6 million the previous week. Still, more than 15 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past few weeks. March unemployment should be released tomorrow, April 17. The IMF announced… Read More →

Current Economic Situation, COVID-19, 4/2/2020

Texas businesses are no strangers to natural disasters. Small business owners have weathered hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, and more. These disasters are short events, although they may be followed by lengthy recovery periods. The COVID-19 pandemic is different in many ways. This event is longer and unknown. Whereas a hurricane hits and moves on within a few days (albeit with massive physical destruction), pandemics can last weeks or months. Pandemics are also widespread rather than contained to a relatively defined geography. Furthermore, pandemics negatively shock both supply and… Read More →

Cultivating Community Wealth: Wealth and Inequality

This post is part of an eight-week series on Cultivating Community Wealth. “Understanding the distribution of wealth across and within communities is also critical if community-level interventions are to be most effective in building on existing assets.” —Pender, Marre, and Reeder, 2012, p.6 The previous Defining Wealth post discussed the importance of improving the prosperity of those on the economic margins (described fully in the WealthWorks curriculum). Pender, Marre, and Reeder (2012) note that improving a community’s aggregate wealth may not improve the economic situation of everyone in… Read More →

La Salle County Judge Talks Oil Boom Impacts in Fed’s Southwest Economy

Judge Joel Rodriquez talks with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s Southwest Economy about the community impacts of the oil boom in La Salle county. Text is available at http://bit.ly/1nGaka0 and audio clips can be accessed at http://bit.ly/1CJGMSJ. Some interesting perspectives related to topics being covered in the AgriLife NEXT series on Energy.

The Role of Rural: The Energy Economy

I’ve written before about The Role of Rural in addressing the world’s wicked problems—challenges including providing food, water, and energy for 9 billion people by 2050: climate change; health; and poverty. These challenges are serious, but they provide opportunities for rural areas. The Texas energy economy has grown substantially in recent years, and is a major part of the Texas economic narrative. Of course, oil has long been been a part of the Texas story and an important component of the economy. After 30 years of falling production,… Read More →