by Pierre G. Villere I love to fish. My wife and I are avid saltwater fishermen here in the waters of South Louisiana, and we spend our summers catching all manner of saltwater species, feeding ourselves and our employees, friends, and neighbors with the freshest of just-caught seafood. What has changed dramatically for me over the last 20 years is…
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Everyone has seen the iconic motion picture It’s a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart (“George Bailey”) and Donna Reed (“Mary”), larger-than-life Hollywood stars from a couple of generations ago. The movie centers around the doom surrounding the possible failure of George’s Building and Loan when Uncle Billy loses an $8,000 deposit, and the bank examiners are called in to investigate.…
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A couple of issues ago, I wrote about how we are willing ourselves into a recession even as the economic indicators point in a different direction. In recent months, we have studied a large variety of economic indicators as we prepared to launch our AVP Pulse Index in cooperation with our sister publication, Rock Products. Like so many periods in…
Read MoreWe all thought putting masks on for a few weeks would be a temporary blip, and that the scourge of Covid-19 would simply go away. Well, as we all know, it cut much deeper into the very fabric of our economy, affecting us in so many ways. First, PPP money and personal stimulus initiatives from the U.S. government fueled inflation…
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I was driving to the airport at 5:15 a.m. one very recent morning to catch an early flight, and tuned into one of my favorite business radio channels for my usual dose of early news and data, and the outlook for the markets. Some financial pundit was being interviewed, giving all the reasons why the recent spate of good economic…
Read MoreJust a couple of months ago, I wrote about the ever-challenging employment picture; next to managing material costs and fuel prices, this is by far the biggest issue of daily operation that continues to be a thorn in the side of every concrete producer and contractor. But now, I am starting to see a swing back the other way. Even…
Read MoreBy Pierre G. Villere I can tell you that of all the things I have aspired to in life, being a lumber dealer has never been one of them. Goodness, the fluctuations in prices is far worse than dispensing gasoline at a convenience store, and now thousands of lumber dealers have seen their standing inventory significantly devalued because of the…
Read Moreby Pierre G. Villere Among the most frustrating aspects of life as we went through the pandemic, and which haunts us still today, is the employment picture. There is no minimizing the magnitude of the human tragedy, with an official tally of over 5.2 million hospital admissions and a stunning 1.04 million deaths; the sheer human loss is unspeakable. But…
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Okay, class, what have you learned from my years of teaching and lecturing around our industry about sentiment? That’s right: sentiment is self-fulfilling. It is remarkably interesting to watch what has occurred since March, when inflation continued to be reported as being stubbornly persistent, and the Fed, like me, changed their view that the rise in prices was not transient…
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The sticker shock Americans are exhibiting in supermarkets, gas stations, and retail establishments is resounding throughout our economy, at a pace faster than I would have expected. The rampant inflation caused by the global supply/demand imbalance and related supply chain issues has ignited inflation from near zero to levels not seen since the 1980s. So with few options, the Fed…
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