Economy

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake wants to attract 10,000 new families to Baltimore by 2020. How’s that going, and what can be done to accelerate the economic investment that creates job and recruits new residents? Members of regional Federal Reserve banks are meeting in Baltimore this week to hear and share strategies.

Can we live sustainably on this planet, and if so, for how long? Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Ken Weiss of The Los Angeles Times spent a year investigating those questions as he traveled the globe for a five-part series called “Beyond 7 Billion.” He joins us to talk about the cultural, economic and environmental consequences of population growth.

Has housing in the Baltimore region changed from a buyer's market to a seller's market? And why is the total number of houses on the market so low? We look at the latest real estate numbers with regional economist Daraius Irani of Towson University and The Baltimore Sun's Steve Kilar.

Then, Andrew Zaleski, lead reporter for the news site Technically Baltimore, joins Nathan to talk about data maps that detail where property taxes hit hardest or where vacants color a neighborhood and other regional tech news.

June 10, 2013

UPDATE (6/10/13 2:30 p.m.): The new numbers are in, and home prices have finally seen a bump over last year, according to Steve Kilar.

A discussion about the retail giant in the wake of the industrial disaster in Bangladesh and the efforts by U.S. workers to get better wages and working conditions. Original air date May 15

From staffing problems to continued battles with local communities, a look at the state of the world’s largest retailer with Lana Stewart , cashier at the Laurel Wal-Mart and a member of a worker-rights organization at the store; Mackenzie Baris, an organizer with Jobs with Justice and an activist with Respect DC; Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works—and How it’s Transforming the American Economy; and Rebekah Massengil, auth

After the demise of steel making, thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment could be coming to Sparrow’s Point over the next decade. We take an in-depth look at the economic possibilities for the area with Kevin Kamenetz, Baltimore County executive; Dan Gunderson, executive director of the Baltimore County Department of Economic Development; and Daraius Irani, executive director of the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University.  

Across-the-board federal spending cuts called “sequestration” were put in place March 1st.  They've already caused layoffs in Maryland. We talk with a federal public defender dealing with furloughs, and a government contractor that has laid workers off due to spending cuts at Fort Meade.

Then, Erika Robuck blends history into fiction in novels about famous authors. Her latest imagines an intense friendship between Zelda Fitzgerald and a psychiatric nurse in Baltimore.  We talk with Robuck ahead of her appearance Saturday at the Annapolis Book Festival.

April 10, 2013

The across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration went into effect more than a month ago.  Some have been delayed—the Federal Aviation Administration announced it’s waiting until mid-June to close air traffic control towers around the country, including five in Maryland.  And the number of furlough days for civilian employees of the Department of Defense has been reduced by about a third.