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Maine's Economic Recovery; Market Sectors for Economic Growth

I would like to discuss the issues concerning Maine and it’s economy. For this most important discussion we are going to focus on jobs and money flow. Well first we should discuss tourism in the coastal areas. They are not breaking any speed records in Kennebunkport or Bar Harbor, but things are doing a lot better now that the late winter is over, that was a bad one, not the worst but relatively tough. If you check into the area around Cape Cod or Plymouth Rock, you will see a little better than last years numbers. But then again everyone in Boston wants to ditch that traffic as downtown area is worse than Denver’s Cluster Fustermuck. Also it is much closer to NYC or NJ for the weekend.

In Bar Harbor things are okay, ferry has full loads to Nova Scotia as does Portland Maine’s ferry departure point. Portland has much foot traffic down town and around the port and boardwalk. Along the Hwy 1 and the offshoot 1As we see good weekend traffic, yet take your self off the main drag inland and within 5 miles you find all those towns a little deprived of cash flow. Along the 95 we are seeing slow return to economic viability for many small businesses and basic industry, which have made it through the rain. The late Strawberry Crop was pushed into summer harvest and causing increased water use, but they had a good snowmelt in the region.

Maine business community is strong hearted and even though much of the major purchases cause exported cash flow to Mass, it comes back into the communities in tourism, seafood, farming and manufacturing. As well as drawing in money from Europe for seafood packaging due to the 30% undervalued dollar on the Euro. Kind of a good deal when all of a sudden you automatically have a 30% discounted product against the European Countries. This helps as people get to go back to work at a fair wage to process. Although there is another issue there due to the over fished ocean and the Boston globe and NY Times is making a bigger deal out of the issue than exists, although truly the issue is real. Real enough to discuss and a little more real than the Global Warming Issue.

In the Georges Bank fishing area there are issues with Natural Gas and fishing, which are looking to be incompatible. Air guns for drilling are said in a study to hurt the hearing of mammals and types of sea life, this makes their auditory abilities week to find fish and communicate with one another. We are going to have a situation with natural gas coming soon, which will affect our economy. Looks like a repeat case of the Nixon era in Santa Barbara and the fight will end up in court, so looks like no one will win, fishing or natural gas. Only the whale watchers may win while the court battle continues until after the shortage predicted. The environmentalists say that the dead sea life spots in the Gulf will also end up off the coast of Maine. But for now Maine is happy to have the undervalued dollar to promote the jobs. In NH across the boarder however manufacturing shrank in June but new construction was doing incredibly well similar to many other markets in the country. Now the economic indicator was nearly 49.8 % but 50% is growth, so there was just the slightest economic deceleration. Now one might consider the harsh winter in the region and it’s problems on the out come of the previous quarter. We are seeing a stabilization in manufacturing in NH while in Maine with it’s many mills, the growth has been in only a few industries thanks to the better weather now.

"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs

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