For the last two days, Cleveland State University has been hosting Lessons from Europe: Regional Governance and Economic Transformation in Older Industrial Cities.

The workshop is being put on by The German Marshall Fund of the United States with support from the Ford Foundation. On Friday, the group will be traveling to Detroit’s NextEnergy to do the whole thing again.

I had the opportunity to sit in on a speech from Professor Dr. Valentino Castellani, the former mayor of Torino, Italy, a city that has been called the Detroit of Europe.

The city was once the industrial capital of Italy, a one-company town where the economy centered around Fiat, the Italian car-maker which is headquartered there.

President Obama will speak just outside Youngstown today at GM’s Lordstown plant, kicking off the a presidential tour of the Midwest on jobs and the economy, according to The Detroit News.

The plant  has been through a series of ups and downs in the past year.
From The Detroit News: Thirteen months ago, then-CEO Rick Wagoner and dignitaries attended a splashy event in the plant to announce a third shift and $350 million investment in the plant to build the new Chevrolet Cruze sedan, which is expected to launch next year and …

The Daily Beast is carrying an article today celebrating the 16th anniversary of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel, The Virgin Suicides, a dark, whimsical, coming-of-age story set in suburban Detroit.
Eugenides, a Detroit native, later went on to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling Middlesex, which also features the Motor City prominently, from the early days of immigrant tenements to red-lining, the race riots, and suburbanization.
The Virgin Suicides offers an exceptional descriptions of Detroit in its heyday; Middlesex an account of the tumultuous series of events that have made it the city it is today.
In …

Rust Wire is excited to share our recent interview with author John Hoerr.
Hoerr spent decades working as a labor journalist, covering labor in the era when unions were much larger and organized labor often made big news. His most well-known work is And the Wolf Finally Came, which is an in-depth, yet easy to read chronicle of the decline of the American steel industry in the 1980s, focusing on the Monongahela Valley. (For all you non-Pittsburgh readers, the Mon Valley is where the Monongahela River flows, through Pittsburgh, and …

Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an article describing a bad outlook for manufacturing.
“The decline in the numbers of manufacturing jobs lost in April may be a sign of even worse news: The country is running out of manufacturing jobs to lose,” the article states.
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CNN is reporting that manufacturing orders have stabilized and the industry will likely undergo an uptick.
Tempe-based Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index is beginning to climb after a 15-month slump.
“This is definitely a good start for the second quarter,” said the institute’s Norbert Ore.
The same cannot be said for automakers.
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I’m kind of surprised we haven’t heard more about this, though I guess it could have been overwhelmed by the swine flu madness and all the other news this week.
Last week, President Obama basically said he has “no present plans” to reopen NAFTA, something he “vowed to do during his campaign,” as The New York Times reported.
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I’m kind of surprised we haven’t heard more about this, though I guess it could have been overwhelmed by the swine flu madness and all the other news this week.
Last week, President Obama basically said he has “no present plans” to reopen NAFTA, something he “vowed to do during his campaign,” as The New York Times reported.
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It may be down, but don’t count manufacturing out.
The Associated Press reports the U.S. still leads the world in manufacturing, in terms of the value of goods sold. In 2007, the U.S. produced a record $1.6 trillion in manufactured goods — mainly heavy manufacturing such as aircrafts, weapons, cars and other vehicles.
Lighter manufacturing is being shifted to cheaper production markets overseas.
However, about 8 percent of the U.S. workforce is still employed in manufacturing. Economists expect U.S. manufacturers to emerge from this recession more productive and efficient, The AP reports.
http://www.buffalonews.com/145/story/581639.html
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