fnb buys another bank, brain drain

Found this on the PGH Quarterly blog:

"Hermitage-based FNB Corp. continued its bank-buying spree this past week announcing a deal to buy Iron & Glass Bank, a South Side fixture for nearly 140 years whose name alone was a daily reminder of the broad shoulders on which the region’s economy once stood."

F.N.B., headquartered in Hermitage PA just over the state line, has assests of $6.1 billion dollars. It is also the bank which is housed in Youngstown's tallest building, the Metropolitan Tower.

Also on the PGH Quarterly blog, you can read Jim's recent post on brian drain in Pittsburgh.

"Brain drain is a real problem for Pittsburgh and just about any other city. But I want to highlight that educating the local workforce will enable more out-migration. Trying to keep people from leaving is working against the flow. That CMU spillovers benefit innovation centers such as Silicon Valley and Seattle is not necessarily a bad outcome for Pittsburgh. A powerful, but latent network is already in place and can facilitate brain circulation."

Gross National Happiness

Youngstown Moxie has been writing about the meaning of wealth and value:

"In the U.S. we have fallen prey to what I call happiness propaganda. The pervasive idea , perpetuated by the media, that unless one is engaged in the activity of consumerism, one can't possibly be happy. It goes without saying that in order to be a consumer one must have economic wealth., and the consumer must spend an inordinate amount of time accumulating that economic wealth. (i.e. usually doing something they despise for eight hours or more a day).

In the United States the word wealth has generally come to mean economic value. However, the word "wealth" actually derives from the English word "weal" which means well-being or welfare. "

Read more of this great post here.

I absolutely refuse to do it

Tales from the Rust Belt discusses what he intends to do with his tax refund, and why you should do the same.

"So, I'll take the government's check, after all, it's my money, but I won't be doing any shopping. I'll be investing in CD's or mutual funds that pay me. Paying me is always better than me paying someone else."

Read more here.

time to re-examine city buyout policies?

The editor of the Vindicator has started a new blog. One of the first subjects he tackles: the mechanism by which a retiree can tap into the system.

"He just left a $93,132 per year job to tap into a $60,000 annual pension. He was incentivized with $65,626 to go into retirement. And he was just awarded $54,246 for unused sick time and other accumulated time over his three decades on the job.

In case you're not scoring at home, that's $273,004 over two-year window as a public employee."

There may be a larger issue here, that being the ability of city workers to come back into the system after retirement, possibly making the city's finances weaker in the long run.

Maybe someone needs to look into this more.