The Grand Rapids Press is the king of mixed messages. On Tuesday, this article ran in the Business section, which is actually kind of odd. Usually they stick all the good economic news back by the obituaries.
GRAND RAPIDS -- Mitch Stapley acknowledges some things look pretty bleak.
On a day when Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co. announced plans to close 14 plants and to cut up to 30,000 jobs, the state already was suffering from higher-than-average unemployment and slow personal income growth, said Stapley, chief fixed income officer of Fifth Third Asset Management, Inc.
But in West Michigan, particularly Grand Rapids, it's not time to "line up and aim for the Sixth Street Bridge and take a plunge into the Grand River," he said.
"Don't short Grand Rapids' future. Our best days are still ahead of us," Stapley told the Economic Club of Grand Rapids on Monday at Amway Grand Plaza Hotel.
While the Big Three automakers of Ford, General Motors Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG are struggling, the office-furniture business with Grand Rapids-based Steelcase Inc. and Zeeland-based Herman Miller Inc. had a solid 2005 and have a positive outlook for this year.
The city's health-care boom puts Grand Rapids in a good position as baby boomers age, requiring more medical care. And tourism and agriculture also are doing well, Stapley said.
"We're going to survive 2006 much better than what's going to happen to the Flints and the Saginaws and the Detroits in the world," he said.
But this morning, on the front page, we get this-
Region's economy looks dim, profs say
West Michigan executives find few reasons to feel upbeat when it comes to the economy, according to the 2006 economic forecast Grand Valley State University researchers wrote for the annual Business Outlook, inside today's Press.
In fact, the bosses feel no better than last year.
"To some extent, pragmatic optimism has been replaced by the notion things are not likely to improve for a while," said Professor Hari Singh, who wrote the report with economist Paul Isley.
They blame higher interest rates, rising energy prices, the war on terrorism, hurricanes and weak job growth.
For a decade, the professors have taken the pulse of more than 150 of the region's top executives to measure their confidence in the local economy.
On a scale of 0 (scared to death) to 100 (absolutely confident), a confidence index of 85 or more reflected happier times in the late 1990s. But in 2005 and this year, that index flatlines at 65 percent.
Granted, I tend to take the word of the professors over the investment banker. But still, sometimes it's mind-numbing the contradictions that appear in our local paper. It's up, it's down. Times are hard, but here we are breaking ground on this, that, the other thing. Hell, the suburbs are starting to look like Chicago and Detroit with the continuous growth outward.
It's no wonder I'm so confused when trying to pin down the actually state of the economy in Michigan. ;-)