Economic Stress Report

We've just gathered sufficient data to provide an update on the Economic Stress Report we introduced last month. According to our analysis method, the following States are on our watch list. We present them here in order of highest to lowest severity:

South Dakota
Ohio
Kansas
Arizona
Washington
New York
Maryland
Florida
Alabama
Connecticut

Of those States on our watch list, the following have suffered bank closures - another sign of economic stress - since December 2007:

South Dakota (1 closure)
Kansas (3 closures)
Washington (2 closures)
Maryland (1 closures)
Florida (5 closures)

With this information, we've updated our predictions from our last post:

One: the list has seen some reshuffling since our last post, but the star of the show is still South Dakota. We take this opportunity to do our happy victory dance: the State, as we predicted it would, recently suffered its first bank closure of the 2007 Depression. However, we strongly suspect that many, many more closures are in store for the State. When that will happen is anyone's guess, but we can't think of one good reason why South Dakota won't be seriously hit by both bank closures and general economic distress. Using Florida as the benchmark, South Dakota should have seen around twenty bank closures already.

Two: we still expect that Maryland is going to be hit hard by both unemployment and bank closures. Again using Florida as a benchmark, Maryland should have experienced about five bank closures. Considering the State's mere placement on our analysis, we would be very surprised indeed if at least something bad doesn't happen. The safety net of Government spending can only last so long; when both the Federal and State Governments are finally forced to curtail their spending, Maryland is going down hard and fast.

It seems we might be able to provide updates approximately monthly, but the duration might be longer or shorter, depending on how our data accumulation progresses.