Wednesday, August 5, 2009

WORD ON THE STREET – INDIANA MAIN STREET ECONOMIC NEWS

 In our recruiting and talent selection business, we are seeing quite a lot of interviewing, hiring, and even planning for larger scale corporate recruiting projects.  I am concerned that the national media is dominating our perspective of the economy with the doom and gloom of Wall Street’s troubles.  What I’m trying to piece together is if the financial troubles in the economy are impacting primarily the Fortune 1000 and not so much affecting the “main street” economy of mid-sized and small companies.

“People should stop listening to the news,” says Elaine Bedel, President and founder of Bedel Financial Consulting.  Bedel feels that investors are paying too much attention to negative news stories in the media about Wall Street and thinking that it means they should tinker with their portfolios.  “I think we’d all be fine if people paid less attention to what’s happening on Wall Street.”

“Overall, we’re not seeing our business owner clients down 30 or 40%,” says Mike Kalscheur, Senior Financial Advisor with Castle Wealth Advisors in Fishers, Indiana.  “It’s more like 10 to 15% when you look across the US.  There are some places on the coasts where you see people’s business off 30%, but that’s the exception right now.”  

Bedel and Castle have both been in business for over 25 years and seen ups and downs in the economy.  While many wealth management companies say that they are “fee only”, Bedel and Castle are two of few firms that really are fee only, selling no financial products themselves.”  

Greg Hahn of Winthrop has recently started his investment management company after being on the institutional side of the business for twenty years as the Chief Investment Officer at Conseco Capital Management.  Hahn feels that the economy is in a serious correction.

We should have seen a contraction back in 2002 but the rebound in financial services in mortgage and securitization just lead to a reallocation of bodies and the bubble kept growing.  I think we’re experiencing a more dramatic correction that we should have seen back in 2002.  If there had been more regulatory oversight of the mortgage lending business we would have had more of a contraction.  (Hahn's comments will continue on subsequent posts on this page and on Indiana Banking Talent.)

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