The day before this column was due, I suffered a serious hand injury which made it impossible to write on a keyboard. I gave up on writing with dictation software years ago, as it is the connection with the keyboard that allows me to do my best work. With my editor’s permission, I dusted off an educational column I wrote…
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As I travel around the country visiting with clients and making industry presentations, I hear the same from almost every producer about the challenges in their businesses: not enough drivers, fuel costs, and materials cost rising faster than they can pass them on among the most frequent. But there is another shoe about to drop that may impact producers, both…
Read MoreLast month, I focused on the general housing inventory issue, which has gone from serious to critical in many markets. I opined that we won’t see any relief from these inventory challenges until interest rates start to fall, but there is more that comes into play beyond interest rates that will steady the housing market; another factor is simply builder…
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by Pierre G. Villere With the rifle-shot increase in interest rates over the last 18 months, catapulting from near zero for certain commercial credits to well over 6.5 percent for home mortgages, we are experiencing something we have not seen in decades: homeowners are sitting on their hands and staying put in their homes, corralled by 30-year fixed mortgage rates…
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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.…
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…
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