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Study costs, public support mount for commuter rail: Key vote on northeast corridor could come next month

Worsening gas prices and congestion have some commuters demanding faster progress on launching a rapid transit line. They can quibble about slowness in getting it done, but lack of study hasn’t been an issue. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Organization spent $4 million since 2002 on a rapid transit study that concluded earlier this year, according to records provided by the agency. Most, or 80 percent, of the funds paid to eight consulting firms came from federal transportation funds, with 20…

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EYE ON THE PIE: This railroad deal is a good deal

Let’s get burritogate out of the way and proceed to more substantive, if less spicy, matters. Yes, a guy who works for the Canadian National Railroad paid for a burrito and a beer that I consumed. He did not know then that I wrote this column and hence commanded a vast, influential audience. I did not know then that he had a project to represent. But CN (as the rail line is called) has a most significant project going. It…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Why Indiana’s AAA bond rating should please all of us

Sometimes, obscure economic issues matter a great deal to our economic well-being. One example is the news that Indiana’s bond rankings have risen to the highest level, the highly coveted AAA ranking from Standard and Poor’s. Why that happened, what it means and why it is important should matter to Hoosiers. To begin with, all states, like virtually all households, borrow money to ease cash flow issues. States also borrow money to make infrastructure investments. The government essentially takes out…

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Mayor’s Action Center might be privatized to cure chronic woes

Maybe it’s a stray dog rooting through your garbage. Perhaps someone has abandoned a car amid the potholes riddling your
street. Either way, Indianapolis offers a one-stop shop for irate residents to complain. Just dial the Mayor’s
Action Center at 327-4MAC. Then get ready to wait. And wait. So long, in fact, that close to half of the
MAC’s callers hang up in frustration.

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INVESTING: Candid e-mails chip away at Wall Street’s credibility

E-mail, today’s ubiquitous form of communication, is proving to be the smoking gun in a number of recent financial fiascos. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently released a draft of its investigation into the behavior of bond-rating firms during the subprime-mortgage-securitization craze. The report highlighted e-mails expressing the sentiment of the authors during the period-a sentiment in conflict with the Wall Street sales pitch being used to sell these securities to investors. One e-mail a Standard & Poor’s analyst sent…

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NOTIONS: Blessings and benefits of bestowing that first break

Dear Win: I’m writing to say thank you. I’m not sure I’ve ever adequately done that. I’m not sure I ever can. I’m also not sure I ever quite grasped the gamble you took on me when I was a not-even-graduated college senior 28 years ago-not until the resumes and referral requests started filling my inbox and the risks of hiring rookies sank in. But this isn’t just between you and me. I hope this letter will prompt others to…

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Commentary: Energy woes need quick, lasting fix

Last month, the front page of The Wall Street Journal featured 25-yearold Saeed Khouri, who paid at auction the equivalent of $14 million of our increasingly worthless American dollars for a license plate bearing “1.” His cousin, Talal Khouri, threw in $9 million in pocket change for tag “5” to tool around Abu Dhabi in his Rolls Royce. Get this, the Khouris declined to be interviewed because they didn’t want to be the center of attention. I am not particularly…

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When to blow the whistle

Whistleblowers are learning the hard way that they wonâ??t necessarily get their jobs back by exposing problems.

The latest such case involved a former banker who saw his case rejected by an appeals court. The court
ruled that his…

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Commentary: Please copy this column

(In deference to ’60s radical Abbie Hoffman and his 1971 cult paperback “Steal This Book,” I hereby relinquish our copyright to this column and give you permission to copy it. I’ll tell you what to do with it later.) Silly me, I thought Mitch Daniels had really shaken things up and done a great job in his first four years as governor. To hear his Democratic opponents in the upcoming election tell it, you’d think he had provided uninspired leadership…

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INVESTING: Financials are way down; don’t be tempted to buy

They say the bodies are piled high on Wall Street of those who were right at the wrong time. Well, with all the soured predictions about financial stocks the last year, the grave diggers have been especially busy. It began around a year ago when Bear Stearns began to plunge, and a famous currency trader from England put a few hundred million dollars into the stock. It was at about $120 at the time. Then, Bear fell to $100 in…

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Mortgage industry under more scrutiny: Tougher rules don’t include yield-spread premiums

A housing crunch resulting from a flood of foreclosures has cast the spotlight on the deceptive practices that cause borrowers-particularly those with weak credit-to unknowingly pay more than necessary for a mortgage. The Federal Reserve earlier this month unanimously approved new lending rules in an attempt to tighten standards and prevent another such crisis. The changes will apply to all mortgage lenders and take effect Oct. 1, 2009. In the subprime category, a lender will have to assess a borrower’s…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: State’s new mortgage law is regulation gone awry

Indiana is known as a state possessed of thoughtful and minimalist regulatory constraint of business. That’s why a littleknown law enacted in 2007, which further regulates mortgage brokers, should come as a shock to many Hoosiers. As of July 1, when the law became effective, roughly 600 Indiana mortgage brokers (perhaps 1/10th of 1 percent of all small businesses in the state) were out of compliance. When a one-month extension granted by Secretary of State Todd Rokita expires next month,…

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A&E: Booker blitzes downtown

It is likely that “Chakaia Booker: Mass Transit,” the 10-piece exhibition running through April 1, will invite a greater negative reaction than the two previous public art shows that dotted downtown. Unlike Tom Otterness-with his rounded smileys masking money-is-evil messages-and Julian Opie-many of whose “Signs” could have served as, well, signs-Booker creates work that is abstract, defiant and unpolished. The pieces-constructed from tires-aren’t pretty, they aren’t funny, they aren’t slick and they don’t seem aimed to please. As such, they…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Don’t blame financial woes on others

A brief rain shower moves across the Front Range onto Colorado Springs. The clouds change their patterns rapidly above Pikes Peak and I sip my coffee at a Starbucks that is unlikely to close. Here, not far from the U.S. Air Force Academy, a brief drive from the U.S Olympic Training Center, the volume of cash passing hourly is heavy enough to ensure that the cappuccino soy latte and the mint mocha frappuccino will continue to be drawn for months,…

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NOTIONS: Bless the blogosphere, all praise social networking

A few months ago, after considerable cajoling, my friend Erik convinced me to join yet another online social network. This one’s called Smaller Indiana. It bills itself as “making people and ideas findable.” So now, in addition to being “LinkedIn” with a few hundred of my friends and colleagues past and present, and in addition to being what BusinessWeek calls a “fogey on Facebook,” I’m also a Smoosier-the moniker for Smaller Indiana members. No sooner had I become a Smoosier…

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Government officials dangle incentives, attracting firms across county lines

Marion County economic development officials are proud of their latest headquarters attraction. Bowen Engineering Corp.
will inject 103 high-paying jobs into the Indianapolis economy immediately. And over time, the company expects
to add another 138. Their average salaries will top $70,000. The deal didn’t require Mayor Greg Ballard
to travel to Japan, or even to another state. Bowen Engineering is moving all of 8.4 miles, from its former
home in Fishers to the 8800 block of North Meridian Street.

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BEHIND THE NEWS: Former Carmel exec goes from fast lane to jail cell

Just a few years ago, Carmel businessman Edward Okun was living the high life. By last year, his personal holdings had grown to include four mansions, a helicopter, three airplanes, 20 automobiles, and a 130-foot yacht. Today, Okun is in a Virginia jail, is represented by a public defender, and faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars. And, angry investors say, rightfully so. They charge-and government investigators agree-that Okun financed his lavish lifestyle by misappropriating…

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Bank-run scenes create concerns: IndyMac situation unlikely in Indiana, but customers should check out stability of their banks, experts warn

It was a scary scene, reminiscent of the Great Depression: Customers lined up outside California’s IndyMac Bank branches to withdraw deposits after a bank run led to the bank’s failure. The images have driven some central Indiana customers-businesses and individuals-to take a more critical look at the strength of their banks and the safety of their deposits. Even as financial stocks rallied in mid-July, the risk remains for more bank failures. Dismal earnings reports and massive write-downs continued in recent…

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VIEWPOINT: Let’s bring government into this century

In the early 1970s, employees at Xerox Corp. developed a breakthrough version of the desktop personal computer called the Xerox Alto. The innovation was quickly shelved by the company-everyone knew there was no market for a personal computer! It was later licensed to Steve Jobs along with a few other “orphan technologies” for $1 million in stock in his young company, Apple. The rest, as they say, is history. Xerox is still a solid company, valued at $17 billion. Of…

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