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Byline: Thomas Oliver The following opinion piece appeared in The Atlanta Journal on Sept. 11, 2001 Monday night on the History Channel, I watched 'Moment of Truth' with historian and [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Good economic news keeps trickling in. We seem to have avoided the dreaded double-dip recession, though how quickly we'll recover is still uncertain. Jeffrey M. Humphreys, Terry [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Politically manufactured disasters always result in politically motivated reform. And the reformers aim to avoid responsibility while pointing to a scapegoat and praying for a gullible public. [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver That most dreaded of dates, April 15, has come and gone. It followed by one week another date that isn't as well known, or even real for [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver My economist e-mail pen pals are encouraged by recent signs and wonders, not the least of which is the continuing uptick in consumer spending. As everyone knows, [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver A new corporate culture and a bifurcated work force are emerging from this life-changing recession. And it might surprise folks to discover who has the upper hand. [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver There are some issues that we as a country seem oddly silent about. Like the unemployment rate of our young people, particularly young blacks. One can't help [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Talk to mortgage bankers, brokers, number crunchers and other wise observers of the metro Atlanta housing market, and you will hear some encouraging news. You also will [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver This column is not for the faint of heart. Or for those who have been driven to their wits' end by the weather. Everyone, it seems, has [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver There is nothing like an economic crisis to stimulate interest in economists and their theories. When the Financial Panic of '08 hit full force, Fed Chairman Ben [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver The jobs bill appears to be falling apart. However, a scaled-down Senate compromise would give employers a break from paying their portion (6.2 percent) of the Social [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Amid all the proposals for jump-starting the jobs market through small business, more attention needs to be focused on startups. That is where new jobs come from. [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Bankers by nature aren't the most jocular bunch. Nowadays, however, they can have the haggard look of a refugee. Bankers have taken a beating in their communities, [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Here we go again. With proposals for creating jobs in our small businesses that owners say won't do the trick. The problem small businesses face (larger businesses, [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Sometimes the answer is staring you in the face. As Atlanta adjusts to the new world order with fewer homes being built and few, if any, speculative [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver We look for silver linings. We cling to words of encouragement. We despair at one more layoff, one more cutback. So it is with December's unemployment rate, [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Real estate isn't going to lead us out of the Great Recession, despite the long-held notion that if housing got us into this mess, then housing would [...]

Been down so long, just about anything looks like up. That's my economic forecast for 2010: It won't feel very good, but it won't hurt nearly as much as last [...]

During this year of rising unemployment and foreclosures, the one bright spot has been the stock market. If the value of our homes continued to take a beating, at least [...]

Even as the unemployment rate dropped, concern has heightened over the 26 million Americans out of work or underemployed. That's because the recession may have ended but hiring has yet [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver If all you paid attention to were the Dow Jones index and the unemployment rate, you would be justifiably confused. The disconnect between Wall Street and Main [...]

Thomas J. Stanley doesn't believe we've learned our lesson. The Atlanta author, former Georgia State professor and expert on the wealthy writes in his new book that once the fear [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver You know things are awful when Washington politicians seem genuinely concerned about small business rather than simply spouting the usual platitudes toward an amorphous group that typically [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver If you thought the debate about health care was surreal, then don't throw away those 3-D glasses, because you'll need them to have any shot at understanding [...]

To understand why Georgia has lost more banks than any other state during this recession, you need to understand why we had so many to begin with. And why so [...]

You want to believe that things are getting better. That the partial restoration of your 401 (k) was based on reality and not just another bubble. You aren't sure you [...]

When the newly named executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority looks out on the Savannah River as two tugboats dock a ship from Asia, he imagines a line from [...]

The Senate Finance Committee must be participating in a prison rehabilitation program. It obviously has a former Enron accountant dummying up the Baucus health care bill, which has enough phony [...]

Foreclosures are bad for the economy. A weak economy means layoffs, which lead to more foreclosures. Which further damage the economy. That classic spiral started with a wave of foreclosures [...]

A jpeg of a poster resides on my computer's desktop. The poster is of firm handshake. The caption reads, 'Consulting: If you aren't part of the solution, there's good money [...]

As a unique way of noting the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Wall Street, a grand fight has broken out among economists, with fingers wagging in pointed essays, scholarly [...]

Byline: Thomas Oliver Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart is a worried man. If he weren't a worrier by nature, his job would have made him one. Two days before [...]

I don't like this anymore than you do. But here goes: Despite our first positive report on housing prices in forever, the slide isn't over. When the latest Case-Shiller Index [...]

As consensus builds that the recession is over, some are crediting Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's stewardship and all but re-nominating him by acclamation. But others worry that declaring the [...]

We may have reached the bottom of our economic descent, but certain segments remain more like black holes that threaten what is likely to be at best an anemic recovery. [...]

What we believe to be true motivates our actions far more than any official proclamation of reality. It's the old 'perception is reality' maxim. We want to believe this is [...]

Let's take a quick glimpse backward at a couple of recessions to see what might lie ahead in the way of recovery, as everyone seems to agree we have reached [...]

The last time we were here, when we just had to do something, immediately, we passed a $787 billion spending bill that promised to stimulate the economy. We know better [...]

Mike Sullivan is typical of our small businessmen and women. He built a business, Southeast Sealing Inc., over the last 37 years that now employs 25. He's brought his son, [...]

Who knew we needed another missile treaty with the Russians? Was it on your top 10 list of things needing top-level attention? Wasn't on mine. A pattern is emerging of [...]

'You've got to be kidding' is the howl being heard from mortgage brokers responding to the new underwriting rules. The corresponding expletive from their customers underscores how far the pendulum [...]

Incoming college freshmen beware: Credit card companies have until February to sign you up. After that, the new credit card law goes into effect and parents will have to co-sign [...]

My Opinion The new credit card law can't protect us from ourselves. Congress has created law where the Federal Reserve had created policy. The Fed's rules are to take effect [...]

We've been down so long, it looks like up to some folks. So they grasp at hints the worst might be over, squint to see green shoots among the weeds [...]

It's the jobs, stupid. No matter where you go, what you hear about is jobs. Jobs lost to the recession. Jobs needed for recovery. How jobs are related to the [...]

You know times are tough when you are a successful 72-year-old businessman sleeping on a blowup mattress in an empty house. But for 46 long days and longer nights, John [...]

Disclosure is as basic to a functioning market as freedom of the press is to a functioning republic. People go to jail for acting on information that hasn't been divulged [...]

The refinancing frenzy reminds Brooks Campbell of 2003. 'If you could spell mortgage or get close, you could make money,' recalled the senior vice president of Vanguard Mortgage Corp. in [...]

Brace yourselves. The gang with 'too big to fail' emblazoned on its T-shirts has smartly scheduled a week of hide and seek with bankers, shareholders, investors and the financial press. [...]

The 70 percent gorilla of our economy --- the consumer --- has changed. Most businesses now are trying to envision what a recovery will be like, assuming they survive that [...]